Day 1 (rainy) - Checked into hotel, buy train tickets to Beijing near Nanjing Road, explore surrounding area, dinner at Lake Garden
Day 2 - Brunch at Jia Jia Tang Bao and Xiao Yang Shen Jian Bao, visit Yu Yuan and Tian Zi Fang, The Bund
Day 3 - Hang Zhou: West Lake, Jing Ci Temple, Pearl Tower area
Day 4 (rainy) - Shopping at Shanghai Book City, Kerry Everbright City, dinner at Orange Room, watch ERA Circus
Day 5 (rainy) - Shopped at Middle Tibet Road, Nanjing Road, dinner at Xiao Shao Xing, take overnight train to Beijing
Day 6 - Checked into Beijing's hotel, visit Tiananmen, The Forbidden City, dinner at Da Dong
Day 7 - Great Wall (Mutianyu section), Temple of Heaven
Day 8 - Summer Palace, Tiananmen at night
This trip is a wish-fulfillment trip.
I have always wanted to take my parents on a China trip. My mother has always expressed her wish of going to Shanghai ever since my aunt went there 10 years ago. But because of money no enough and little experience of flying (with my parents and kid in tow), I decided to explore smaller and more manageable areas first ie. Taipei and Hong Kong.
I am quite aware that next year, being her PSLE year, is a crucial year for Coco. I am hoping to skip travelling next year. With my parents' advancement of age, the urgency of taking them on a trip was evidently more real than ever, especially when you are talking about China. Travelling agencies I approached had advised me to take old people to Shanghai only. They said that Beijing has 'big areas'（大景点）- a term that I did not or could not appreciate until I went there myself.
I wanted my father to enjoy the trip as well. I felt that he would appreciate Beijing better than Shanghai since Beijing is China's historical city. He has always loved watching ancient China shows so I thought leaving China without going to Beijing would be quite 'wasted'.
A few issues:
1) I had to decide on 'group tour' or 'F&E'. Group tour allows us to see and go to more places, eat well, stay good. Cons: need to wake up early, change hotels (4 in Shanghai alone), go to places we don't fancy.
I decided on F&E because I wanted a trip that we would take our time and enjoy as we like it.
2) Booking of air tickets.
William had told me I should book one-way air tickets to Shanghai and then one-way tickets back from Beijing to Singapore. That proved to be awfully expensive and I was about to give up the idea of travelling to two places.
Under the good advice of a well-travelled friend, I booked air tickets that had a stopover in Shanghai and last stop in Beijing. That's one new thing learnt for me.
I borrowed some books in the library to read up a bit and did some research on the internet to do up my itinerary and off we went!
No comments:
Post a Comment