Day 3

Our gang of 12 from Guangzhou finally got to meet the rest of our travelling companions this morning. 10 from Melbourne, 2 from Adelaide and 6 Kiwis. All were delayed because of the bad weather, but we all agreed….cest la vie!

Our tour guide Will, packed us all up and bundled us onto a bus bound for the Bullet Train at Chengdu Railway Station.

Here, Will is explaining how to interpret all the numbers and symbols on our train tickets so we go through the right gate, get onto the right carriage and find the right seat. He also explained that the toilets on the train would score 5/5 at the start of the trip, but by the end, the score would more likely be -5/5. And he was right!

Believe it or not, by the end of the journey, the choice on the right was much more preferable!

Travelling through Chengdu to the station was our first real taste of residential China. In a city of 18m people, most of whom are housed in high rise, we took 45 minutes to drive through the city, a sea of apartment blocks on both sides.

It seemed endless.

We also had our first taste of travelling in an organised tour group of 30, with at least half the group 70+ in age. Slow going! Lots of toilet breaks!

The train looked sleek from the outside.

But in reality it was cramped and uncomfortable, squeezing in 5 seats across each row, with none of the electronic gadgetry we’d experienced on the TGV from London to Paris.

The 6 hours whizzed by, and once again we were awestruck at the magnitude of construction. One minute you’d be flying through rural China, the next through a high rise city.

And this happened over and over again. Tunnel after tunnel after tunnel through mountains, some taking 10 minutes to get through. One second of daylight and then back into blackness. And all of this at 200km/h. It was mind boggling.

We arrived in Yichang and were taken to dinner, we think at a wedding reception venue. As we left, prospective waiters/waitresses were being put through their paces. They all seemed pretty intimidated, and as such, extremely obedient!

Another one hour bus ride through more tunnels took us to the ‘port’, actually called Moping (Mow-ping).

After three days, we were pretty much done travelling!

Tripadeal, too good to be true…..it was now we were informed that for a cool $200pp we could upgrade our cabin (bigger) and dining package (smaller dining room, better food and grog included). Oh and free use of the pool, but not wifi. That was an extra $10. Apparently, had I read Tripadvisor, I should have known this! Their recommendation was to upgrade, so we did, with no regrets!

Our ship, the Yangtze 2, was moored on the river, about 200m below the roadway. By the time we arrived, it was dark, so we had to negotiate our way down about 500 steps in poor lighting and with some trepidation. Luckily our bags were taken down for us. We could have taken a cable car down for $2, but thought it was for the oldies. Needless to say, we didn’t do it again! (We were to be here 24 hrs)

This is what it looked like in daylight.

We had a welcome beer at the bar with our new friends and collapsed into bed. Totally spent.

Day 2

A bit of a slow start today, sitting around waiting for our 1pm shuttle to the airport. We took a walk around the local area and discovered we were surrounded by blocks of apartments, not as bland as some we’d seen, but when you’re talking about hundreds of apartment blocks as far as the eye can see, nothing is a standout! In the midst of most blocks is a park of some kind, allowing the families to have some downtime. These particular blocks seemed to be luckier than most, with a swimming pool complex. Being summer holidays here at the moment, it was popular!

We were quite anxious to get to Chengdu, as we had to catch a bullet train the following day to make the departure time for our river cruise starting at Yichang, so we were relieved when the shuttle bus turned up on time.

Although delayed, our flight eventually left at 5pm and was relatively smooth. Our hotel at Chengdu is 5 star and very acceptable.

By the time we settled in at the hotel, nothing much was open. As we were to discover, Tripadeal tends to book hotels in the ‘Burbs rather than downtown. A bit of a cultural wasteland. We went for a walk and discovered we were located opposite a kiddie funpark called Floraland.

It was about the only action going!

We had to settle for a sandwich and a beer from the local convenience store for our supper.At 11pm, it was totally delicious!

Tripadeal China- Too Good to be True?

We didn’t mean to do it! Really!

But Tripadeal’s offer of 10 days in China, $2999, 2 for 1, including airfares…It’s a no brainer right?

Day 1

* Warning. This post contains nudity.

We haven’t departed from Sydney airport at a decent hour for a long time. We’re usually stumbling through the terminal at 4am, with very little open and not much going on.

Today, by 9am, it was buzzing. And it’s changed. Very glitzy, very glam.

You can watch the planes from comfy chairs through generous windows. In fact, looking out, we could have been in China already!

China Southern Airlines impressed. The friendly Check-in lady told us our destination tonight, Chengdu, was renowned for its delicious hotpots and tofu. We couldn’t wait! When we arrived at the gate the staff apologised that one of our seatback screens was broken and they would have to move us. But it was ok, they gave us a row to ourselves, and even came on board to check we were ok.

Flight of about 9 hours was ok. However, our ‘stopover’ at Guangzhou became a bit longer than expected!

After blitzing immigration and providing a full set of fingerprints (damnit, looks like I won’t get away with nicking the hotel ashtray!), we discovered our second flight to Chengdu had been cancelled due to bad weather.

Such a shame, as the next available flight was not until 3pm the next day, meaning we’d miss seeing the pandas.

But by then we’d met up with the other Tripadeal tragics and formed a gang. Our self-styled leader Robyn, a veteran of Tripadeals, took charge. After an hour wait while they tried to locate our bags, Robyn had transport and hotels booked and before we knew it, we were heading to town in a minibus, being fed and watered, and enjoying a cool, not cold, beer.

Back in our hotel room, we discovered a peculiar set up in the bathroom. A glass wall between the shower and bedroom had a roller blind on it. Kinky!

It all made sense! We were staying at the Grandpeak Hotel!

We farewelled Ireland with a final Guiness at the airport. It was 9.30am, but looking around, it seemed the right thing to do! We weren’t alone!

The flight to Nice took only 2 hours and we were treated to some amazing scenes of the French Alps along the way.

Then hey presto, we’re on the French Riviera!

The colours were so bright! The women were so gorgeous!

Our hotel was just so typically French. Run down and shabby chic on the outside, but our room was fine. The hotel had the bonus of a waterfront terrace with a not so shabby view!

We had a few hours to wait before Katie and Chris arrived. The tension and nervous excitement was excruciating. We liaised with Chris most of the afternoon, so knew when they had landed and were on their way walking from the tram to their accommodation. Our plan was to ambush them outside their hotel in Place Messina, in front of a huge fountain.

It worked a treat!

 

There were hugs and tears, tears and hugs, lots of kissing and more tears and hugs! Yes, the past month We had the most wonderful 44 hours with K & C. Saturday was spent at a swanky beach lounge with cocktails, yummy food, lots of sun and swimming.

Water sports aplenty (watching, not doing)!

A birthday dinner, with candles, sans cake.

 

On Sunday we walked up to the lookout on the headland, which on one side, looked over the beach and old town area.

On the other side was the port, and we watched transfixed as the Corsica ferry arrived, backed in, then snuggly docked as if it were a car reverse parking! Please note the luxury cruiser in the foreground with its own helicopter!

After lunch in the old town, K&C went for another swim and we relaxed on the terrace until it was time for them to go.

It had been a whirlwind weekend and we’d loved every minute.

As John and I walked along the Promenade Des Anglais, the mood was sombre as it was the anniversary of the terrorist attacks. We signed the condolence book near the memorial.

There is also a commemorative monument to the attack made up of huge iron pillars, randomly stacked, but meeting together at the pinnacle. At 10.30pm the thousands of people walking along the promenade all stopped and there was silence.

86 beams of light, one for each victim of the terrorist attack, were turned on, and as with the iron pillars, they all converged in the sky. There was a minutes silence, then life went on.

 

Day 23

So here we are again in Dublin town and back with Marco at The James Joyce Guesthouse. We’re pretty exhausted! Time to reflect.

We’ve driven 4300kms, through 20 counties, and walked 333,783 steps. Oh, and have probably averaged 2 pints of Guinness per day each too!

We’ve been truly blessed with the weather, most days have been mild and sunny, certainly not hot! As usual, probably the best and most enjoyable memories coincide with stunning blue skies and sunshine.

Spending time with Ollie, Izzy and the kids was the best.

Highlights for me were Slieve League, Belfast, Dingle, and all of Galway. John rates the Beare Peninsula, The Burren, Galway City, Derry and Belfast.

The beer has been great, food pretty good apart from the propensity to serve EVERYTHING with chips! Our observations 5 each of neg and pos are as follows:

1. Roads are shite.

2. The bathroom shower mechanisms change as often as you change counties.

3. It’s expensive!

4. For some, the Troubles are still a way of life.

5. Roadworks everywhere (but that’s ok. See 1.)

BUT

1. Scenery and greenery are amazing.

2. Our Airbnb host’s generosity has been fabulous.

3. The optimism of the majority is totally real.

4. The history has been an eye opener.

5. Did I say scenery?

We’ve loved every minute of being in Ireland. The people are Ireland’s future. If they’re all like Marco, who runs the best restaurant in town, Terra Madre, (as well as the guesthouse), Ireland is in good hands. Marco, in the footsteps of Marconi, the modern day Irish Italian!

I can’t let a blog go by without some comments about John.

Travelling with your life partner 24/7 presents its challenges.

John is a bit OTT when it comes to his nic nac bag. John’s nic nac bag contains his technology accessories.

I think I’m putting it mildly to say the contents of the nic nac bag have driven me crazy for the past 24 days! Totally obsessed, it’s the first job tackled every evening. If we found a power board at our Airbnb, John’s stress level immediately abated. I called it ‘The Grand Plug-in’.

Another of John’s stresses appeared on Niamh’s instrument panel about a week ago.

What is Adblue? No feckin’ idea! Although it said we had a 2400km range, John was worried. We stopped at every service station known to man in search of Adblue. Unfortunately, as Irish luck would have it, there seemed to be a nationwide shortage of Adblue.

You can imagine the relief, when finally, yesterday, a bottle of the precious liquid was sourced.

John was triumphant!

John also, I think, preferred navigating to driving. Why you ask? Because he could use the paper map, the phone, the tablet and the Sat Nav all at the same time to work out our route! Blokes just need to be doing something with their hands!

Can’t wait to do it all over again!

Day 23

It was SO hard to say goodbye to Irene and Walter. We had really clicked and felt we were saying goodbye to our family. Such gentle, genuine and generous people. Walter even gave us some pens, all different, that he’d hand-turned, a hobby originating from his trade as a chippy.

We had the whole day to get back to Dublin. You can drive it in less than 2 hours along the motorway. We took 7 hours! We continued our tactic of driving along the coast. Very pretty, very flat.

We took our time motoring down the Ards Peninsula to Portaferry where we were the last car to board! Talk about timing! The view crossing Strangford Lough was idyllic.

Intending to follow the coast all the way to Newry then hook onto the motorway, John as navigator for the day, discovered we could take another car ferry across Carlingford Lough. Googling the timetable, we discovered the ferry only went every hour. We had 15 minutes and 14 kms to go. The race was on! As the Sydney Swans are apt to do, we started to duck, weave, put the foot on the throttle along the narrow lanes, taking uncharacteristic chances overtaking slow drivers in VW Golf cars (never in Australia!).

Feckin’ tractors!

We turned the corner before the ferry departure point 3 minutes late. Miraculously it was still there, but the gates were closed. A horn toot to gain attention did the trick, and we were on!

That’s our Niamh, lucky last again! The Loughs had been conquered!

It was onto the motorway and onwards to Dublin, via Drogheda and the Battle of the Boyne site. Drogheda was where 3000 ‘papists’ were murdered by Oliver Cromwell’s troops in 1649, as punishment for siding with the Catholic Charles 1 in the Civil War.

Literally 5kms away, is the Battle of the Boyne site.

In 1690, more than 60,000 soldiers of the armies of James 11 and William 111 (who were fighting to consolidate their claim to the English throne), fought on this patch of farm land beside the pretty Boyne River. William prevailed and James fled to France. The museum wasn’t quite as high tech as we had experienced yesterday, but they were very insistent we didn’t miss the laser show.

And the lavender garden was very pretty.

Day 22

Our local train station, Greenisland, was only 4 stops from Central Belfast. It was a drizzly morning so we made our way to the Titanic Quarter, specifically the Titanic Museum.

It cost €77m to build and is pure architectural genius. Everything about it is symbolic. The exterior walls represent both the prow of the ship and the iceberg that it hit.

Even the seats outside are different sizes representing the dots and dashes of the morse code message sent by the sinking ship.

The museum is built on the actual slipway site where Titanic was built. The outline of the ship is mapped out on the ground.

Some silly people try and imitate Kate Winslet (John made me do it).

As an aside, the first movie about the Titanic disaster was made 4 days after the event!

The inside is made up of so many different types of displays. Some are static like this one, but if you stood at the bow or stern and looked down the centre piece of perspex, you could see the ship before and after its fit out. Clever!

Most displays are interactive and high tech. One room projects 3D images onto 3 walls, making you feel you are actually on the ship.

There’s even a themepark-like ride. Sitting in little suspended pods, you are taken on a twisting, turning ride, hydraulics lifting you up and down, while you travel through the noisy, busy shipyard.

Time got away…we emerged 4 hours later!

We walked into the city and immediately felt it was vibrant and multicultural, a real mix of old and new.

We found a cosy lunch spot down a very narrow laneway.

Asking the waiter to leave off the fries from our order, his jaw literally dropped. He started to protest and it seemed he might get punished for taking a ‘no fries’ order to the kitchen, so we gave up. Funny thing was, they were the best chips we’d had, and we ate every last one! Our little laneway was one of about 5, collectively called The Entries, linking up major streets.

After our history lesson on the Troubles in Derry, we tentatively ventured into West Belfast. Whilst the city felt very safe and ‘normal’, it didn’t take long for the mood to change. Walking a few kms up Catholic Falls Rd, the bleakness and difference in affluence was stark. Murals covered most walls and house gables.

The Headquarters of Sinn Fein was easy to locate, with a mural of hunger striker Bobby Sands completely covering one exterior wall.

Nearby was a Peace Garden to honour those who died for the cause.

An iron gateway indicated the transfer of allegiances from Republican to Loyalist at the so called ‘Peace Line’,

in reality, a 6m high and 4km long wall. In one step, we were in Protestant West Belfast.

The murals along Shankhill Rd were no less imposing on this side, the messages equally chilling.

We passed several tower-like structures made of wooden pallets like this.

We found out they were intended bonfires, built in preparation for Friday 12th July, when Northern Ireland celebrates the victory of the Orangemen at the Battle of the Boyne. We’re glad we won’t be around for that!

And of course, this side had its own Peace Garden too.

We retreated back to the city centre and to the Parisian cafe, recommended by Irene, and made our way to the balcony. The afternoon weather had much improved and we enjoyed a Parisian coffee ( Tia Maria and Contreau) overlooking the Town Hall. Must remember that combo. It was delicious!

On our way home from the station, we detoured to the War Memorial obelisk above Carrickfergus and looked back over Belfast, lights twinkling innocently as the sky darkened, with the Mourne Mountains silhouetted in the background.

When we got home at about 10pm, Walter and Irene were still mowing the grass.

We talked to Irene about the Troubles and her opinion was that most people wanted to forgive, forget and move on. Amazing she should say that because she told us her father had been caught in crossfire when working in West Belfast and sustained 9 bullet wounds. Now an old man, he has been physically suffering ever since. Understandable!

No one was ever caught for this shooting. It seems very few are.

Day 21

Crossing into Northern Ireland was no drama. No borders, no passports needed. But subtly, the scenery changed. Stone fences were replaced with hedges, miles replaced kilometres, we paid in pounds and not Euros. Weird!

Our Airbnb last night was situated beside a stream near the village of Strocum. Words of wisdom were displayed on the wall.

It afforded us some privacy and quietness, and with decent internet speed, allowed me to catch up with blogging!

The area’s claim to fame is having a GOT set close by called Dark Hedges. We visited about 9pm and there were still about 20 people there.

Quite beautiful. The Dark Hedges feature in Series 2, when Arya flees King’s Landing in the back of a wagon, disguised as a boy (for those of you who care)!

As it turned out, it was the first of two GOT settings we saw today.

Our first stop today was The Giant’s Causeway. A total experience! Starting at the state of the art visitors centre, you don an interpretive narrative recorder with headphones, then proceed down a pathway towards the Causeway, about a km away.

Along the pathway, this rocky outcrop was pointed out to us… can you see a camel??

There were lots of tourists at The Causeway, even though the rain was lightly spitting.

The formations are quite spectacular, but glad we saw them at low tide! This one half way up the adjacent cliff is called ‘The Organ’.

And this is the view from above.

Only about 10kms further along the coast is the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge. Built by fishermen to reach a rocky outcrop off shore, a 1m wide structure of wire rope and planks sway 30m above a chasm of swirling water. Not the most pleasant of experiences!

Our car was parked in what you might think is a carpark, but no! Another GOT setting, this time the scene where Brienn of Tarth first makes her appearance, fighting against Loras Tyrol in front of Marjery and Renly. Series 2.

Travelling down the east coast was so different from the Wild Atlantic Way. Dramatic cliffs were replaced by rolling hills, the coast road came down to sea level, gently curling around the headlands.

Our destination for the night was Carrickfergus, a township about 10kms north of Belfast. Our hosts Walter and Irene are just beautiful. Walter immediately took us on a drive to ‘get our bearings’, talk about the royal tour! This is what the view looked like from our bedroom when we arrived. The bottom pic is what it looked like at 10pm when we returned from dinner!

And it’s the middle of summer!

Day 20

We never intended to visit Derry (or Londonderry, depending what your creed is), but several of our B&B hosts had recommended it, and we’re so glad they did!

We didn’t know Derry was a walled city, a fact that we soon realised makes it not only compact, but provides an automatic barrier between warring factions. We were there on a Sunday so it was relatively quiet, but there was still an air of menace about.

Derry is 2/3 Catholic, and following the Partition of Ireland, its politics were blatantly discriminatory against the Catholic majority who were denied basic civil rights regarding housing and employment. A huge civil rights march in 1968 was confronted by the Protestant police force causing rioting and injuries. This clash was seen by many as being a catalyst for the Troubles, and the IRA was born shortly after. After Bloody Sunday in 1972, when 14 innocent protesters were killed by British paratroopers, the Catholic area known as Bogside, became a no-go area for Protestants. Similarly, on the other side of the walled city, the Protestant area was a no-go area for Catholics. I might be wrong, but it certainly felt like nothing had changed!

We walked the entire length of the walls, and what we saw along the way was an eye opener. The Protestant area of Fountain Road, tenements long since gone, proudly wears the slogan ‘West Bank Loyalists Still Under Seige. No Surrender’. Even the lamp posts are coloured red, white and blue.

Walking around towards Catholic Bogside, the closely built houses looked like patchwork on the hill.

Venturing down into Bogside was eerie. 12 Murals, called The People’s Gallery, dominate the end of terraced housing.

The Republicans have their own painted slogan,

which stands as a background to the Bloody Sunday memorial, situated bizarrely in the middle of a roundabout.

Derry is trying to change. The opening of the Peace Bridge in 2011, a curved shaped structure symbolically linking the Protestant east bank with the overwhelmingly dominant Catholic west bank, was seen as helping rebalance the communities.

This mural proudly celebrates the successful Netflix series ‘The Derry Girls’.

But most poignant of all was the sculpture ‘Hands Across the Divide’ on the banks of the River Foyle.

Poignant because it was so beautiful, yet having walked around this city, I couldn’t feel anything other than it was a tokenistic gesture of reconciliation. I just felt really sad.