December 30, 2016

Your Ultimate Guide To The Best Places To Travel In 2017

by Lindsay Shapka in Adventure, Destinations, Travel, Travel Adventures, Travel Tips

Are you wondering where to go on holiday this year? Need some insight into the top travel destinations? You've come to the right place!

Everyone seems to put out a "Best Spots to Travel" list every year, so to make things easy for you, I've put together a master list with the Top 3 spots from the following lists: National Geographic's "Best Trips 2017", Travel and Leisure's "Best Places to Travel in 2017", Fodor's "No List 2017", Lonely Planet's "Best In Travel 2017", and Conde Nast's "Best Places to Travel in 2017."

October 30, 2016

24 Hours In Shanghai

by Lindsay Shapka in Adventure, Destinations, Travel, Travel Adventures, Travel Tips

Do you only have a day to spend in Shanghai? You've come to the right place! This is your 24-hour guide to the things you need to see and do in Shanghai!

Sometimes referred to as the "Paris of the East," Shanghai is one of China's largest and most cosmopolitan cities. While it doesn't have the epic historic sites that you will find in Beijing and Xian, the city has a lot of great spots to explore!

July 4, 2013

Travel Tales: Riding A Roller Coaster Up The Great Wall Of China

by Lindsay Shapka in Travel, Travel Adventures, Travel Tips

I had spent my first full day in Beijing walking all over the city. I went from my hostel to Mao's Mausoleum, through Tiananmen Square, and into the Forbidden Palace complex that seemed to stretch for miles. Then I hopped in a cab and headed to the Temple of Heaven complex and a hutong before sitting down for a delicious dinner of Peking Duck — it was a BIG day.

So, despite my aversion to organized tours — they usually involve getting taken to a souvenir shop or wasting time at a sub-par restaurant — the next day I welcomed the chance to sit on a tour bus for a few hours as it wound its way through the suburbs of Beijing towards one of the most famous walls in the world — The Great Wall of China.

“It is often said that the Great Wall can be seen from the moon with the naked eye, but in 2003, China’s first astronaut Yang Liwei failed to spot the famous barrier from space”

Building started on this must-see sight (considered to be one of the Seven Wonders of The World) over 2000 years ago when China was unified under one Emperor.

Separate walls that had been constructed by individual kingdoms were linked together to create the wall as it exists today. Hundreds of thousands of workers (most were prisoners of the Emperor) used earth and stone to form the original wall — legend has it that the bones of some of these workers, who were worked like slaves, were also one of the building materials.

Though the wall never was the impenetrable wall of defense that it was meant to be, it acted like an elevated highway through incredibly mountainous terrain, and a way of sending signals over a vast territory very quickly.

The majority of the wall has now badly disintegrated, but thanks to the tourist industry, it is continually being restored.

My tour took me to the most popular part of the wall 70 km north of Beijing called, Badaling. I realized that I really was on a "tour" when my bus pulled up to a bus filled parking lot and our guide ushered us into a dark building.

Once my eyes adjusted to the light, I noticed a few benches and what looked like a roller coaster... A ROLLER COASTER?!

I blinked again just to make sure, but yup — apparently my tour ticket involved a roller coaster ride up the side of the mountain to the top of the wall. Tourism at its best. Only in China do ancient ruins and roller coasters go hand in hand.

The part of the wall just outside the roller coaster drop-off was packed with people, but because I was there in April, and during the week, it was pretty quiet once I passed through a few of the watchtowers. Some sections were even completely deserted, making for some amazing photo opportunities.

If you are planning on visiting the wall yourself, try to avoid May-August.

The pollution in China is pretty awful, and when smog mixes with the heat you can barely see a few feet in front of you and the view is badly compromised.

If you must go during the hot season, I recommend visiting the wall first thing in the morning to try and see as much as you can before the smog descends.

Travel Tales: Exploring A Historic Beijing Hutong

by Lindsay Shapka in Travel Adventures, Travel, Travel Tips, Adventure

For the entire 20 minutes I was in his cab, my driver used the little English he knew to try and convince me to let him take me to a "very good duck restaurant" or the "Forbidden Palace". I patiently responded "No, Shay Shay" (No, thank you) every time. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to get a higher fare out of me or if he was genuinely concerned to be taking me to a place not often visited by tourists.

I had read that the best way to explore the historical hutong’s (narrow alleys) of Beijing was to wander away from the tourist spots, near the city center, where the narrow alleyways crisscrossed east-west across the city.

The enchanting maze of one-story dilapidated dwellings and courtyards are home to a quarter of the city’s population, but that number is dropping as the government continues to knock these historical areas down, determined to cover the city in modern, high-rise buildings.

Reluctantly, my driver pulled to a stop at the end of a wide, pedestrian road, lined with antique stores. I handed him my fare and climbed out of the tiny car, leaving him shouting, "acrobat show?!" behind me in a desperate attempt to get me back in his cab.

I shook my head and smiled, but didn’t turn around, there was too much to look at in front of me.

I was on one of Beijing’s antique streets lined with shops full of old books, paintings, paper and brushes as well as Cultural Revolution kitsch like copies of Mao’s Little Red Book, pins with his face on them, and statues of the now deceased leader.

Though I was intrigued at first, it didn’t take long for me to get annoyed with the pushy salespeople trying to shove their products in my face. This was clearly not the place to window shop. I wasn’t there for shopping though — I was there to explore the hutong.

Ducking through a small archway, I found myself in a deserted, narrow alleyway. Laundry hung on hangers from the overhead power lines and on ropes strung between doorways. Too small for cars to fit down, the alley had bikes and scooters parked sporadically to it’s side. I was a bit surprised to see that nothing was locked up.

Peeking through a doorway, I found myself looking straight into an outhouse. The blue wooden door sagged open and there was about half a roll of toilet paper hung on a nail just outside it (most hutong’s still don’t have plumbing).

Two men sat on stools in another doorway further down the alley, playing chess. They looked up at me surprised when I walked by, I can’t imagine that they get many foreigners walking alone through their neighborhood. I smiled at them, self-consciously slipping my camera into my pocket, and nodded before continuing on my way.

They were the only people that I saw, and after awhile, as the shadows started to get longer, the deserted alleys started to feel dilapidated and even a little eerie.

Just as I was actually starting to get scared, wondering how I was going to get out of the maze with no phone and not knowing a word of Mandarin or Cantonese, I turned a corner and almost stumbled into a busy street.

Letting out the breath that I hadn’t even realized that I was holding, I threw my arm up in the air, and a cab — after careening across three lanes of chaotic traffic to get to me — screeched to a halt beside me.

I gave him the name of my hostel and sat back listening to him offer to take me to Summer Palace and Temple of Heaven instead as we pulled back onto the busy road, leaving the maze of the hutong behind us.