Therefore, Hong Kong exceeded expectations.

In some ways, Hong Kong is smaller than I expected: 7M people (just more than 1/3 of Beijing) and we walked a good chunk of the length of the core (Central to Causeway Bay subway stations) in an hour or so.

I also knew Hong Kong was a tall city: our hotel was hardly in the centre of the city, but from our 15th floor hotel room, I couldn’t see more than a block in any direction, and 8 story buildings below just seemed like a waste of space. It took my brain a while to really process that the whole city is like that.

I have also never been to a more “international” city than Hong Kong, possibly because none exist. I was entirely comfortable in the city: it felt a lot like a taller version of Richmond. I imagine that Brits would be totally comfortable in the city, so should mainland Chinese. Tourists from France seemed pretty at-ease, and there seemed to be a solid Indian population as well. I can’t think of anywhere else I’ve been where so many people could hang around without being out of place.

Also, at 7M people, that must mean that something like 5% of Hong Kongers must now be in Vancouver. (350k Hong Kong immigrants and descendants in Vancouver doesn’t sound that far off to me.) I had never really thought about the numbers from that side: everybody in Vancouver knows a bunch of people from Hong Kong, but everybody in Hong Kong must have a friend or two in Vancouver as well.

In summary: insufficient time spent in Hong Kong; must investigate further in the future.

Our second day in Hangzhou was dominated by the University: it was my work day. We had lunch at ZJU with some DDP students who will be coming to SFU in 2012 or 2013 (and a few who cam from SFU last year).

The purpose of the lunch was to give students a chance to ask us some questions about SFU and living in Vancouver: all four of us were SFU students at one point. It took a while to talk the people there into organizing an “informal” lunch where we could just chat with the students.

In the end, it worked out exactly like I hoped. Some questions we got: will I have to speak french? How often is Glee on every week? Is there any racism? Can I take business courses too? As usual, the ZJU students were a lot of fun and I’m glad we stopped there.

As expected, after that we became the University’s guests for the rest of the day. We walked through the adjoining botanical gardens and to dinner, which was very Hangzhou-focused and great.

The next day, we walked around the Xixi wetlands with Amy Gu, her husband Kevin and son Roland. Amy and I talked about our courses while the rest looked at birds, and it was great.

Just like last time, I really liked Hangzhou. The idea of going to teach for a semester at ZJU is looking better and better.

Wednesday night (after the flight), we took a walk around the city: north along the lakeshore and back through the city. Somewhere in there, we realized we were all hungry and found this fast food place upstairs (at Yan’an and Qingchun roads for anybody keeping score).

When we went in, it was immediately obvious to Oli and I that ordering was impossible: you seemed to have to buy tickets (from a Chinese-text-only menu) and then go to the prep area and give them your tickets to get food. The text-only menu was a dealbreaker for us and we suggested moving on.

Kat and Tina went up to the food-getting area and started pointing at things. Some dude that worked there took pity on them, led them to the cashier, ordered the things they had pointed at, and took them back to get food.

Oli and I were left thinking “what the hell just happened? Why are we eating?” Then they somehow ordered seconds.

This illustrated the strategic difference between our coping strategies. I want to have a plan, like I did with the great wall driver: I’ll translate “lunch noodles” and then reply “yes” to whatever he says next. Kat is much more comfortable going in guns-blazing (with a note pinned to her chest that says “sorry I don’t understand Chinese”). I believe these strategies are complementary.

Other than that, good first day here: paddle around the lake and tour of the tea fields (by taxi). It’s pouring rain and I was really a lot wetter than I was comfortable with yesterday, and today promises more of the same.

On Monday we got a driver from the hotel to take us to the Great wall (Juyongguan section). That was excellent.

After the wall, we were thinking about lunch, but the driver spoke no english. Through the magic of Pleco, I translated “lunch, noodles”, to which he responded (thanks to its handwriting recognition) something that translated like “noodles with bean sauce”. We said yes, and he took us somewhere back in Beijing. We convinced him to eat with us and had something I have since learned is called “zha jiang mian” and was amazing.

Pointers to good zha jiang mian in Vancouver would be appreciated, since the idea of not having it again makes me sad.

Today, we walked through Tiananmen square and the Forbidden City. Then back south through Wangfujing.

To Hangzhou tomorrow, where I honestly hope there is less to see, since I don’t think we can keep up this pace: I think the combination of walking everywhere (including up the wall) and mental overhead trying to figure out how to do things without sharing a language with the locals is taking its toll.

Pictures are being posted, daily(-ish).

But here we are: me, Kat, and our friends Oli and Tina. We’re staying at the hotel where Tina’s conference was. (The conference was the original seed of the idea for the trip.) The hotel is around NW 3rd ring road, near Peking and Tsinghua Universities, for those who care.

Today, we met a friend of a friend who grew up in this part of the city. He showed us around the two Universities. It really seems like they have a Harvard/MIT thing going on: Peking is the top-ranked school, but Tsinghua is right next door, a close second, and has more of an engineering/applied focus.

Kat and I always seem to swing by local Universities when we’re on vacation. Having spent just about exactly half of my life around Universities, there’s a comforting sameness about them. What differences exist are always glaring.

In the name of not packing too much into this trip, that was our day. We’ll probably do something after dinner: plans still unclear.

The cruise ship docked in Naples the next day: it’s a port city, so no shuttle buses to worry about. We had no agenda in Naples, other than to eat pizza.

We walked around the city a bit, but mostly killed time until our lunch at Pizzeria Brandi. They are the creator of Pizza Margharita, and that’s exactly what we had. We had planned a second lunch before leaving the city, but all the restaurants closed for the afternoon and we were foiled.

Then, an at-sea day and the next day at Palma de Mallorca.

I had been thinking of Palma as kind of just a place for them to stop the ship for the day, so I wasn’t expecting much. It ended up being one of the prettiest places we went the whole trip. The guide books said that it was a late-night party city and things didn’t really get started until late morning. We got off the boat at around 10:00, but everything except the occasional coffee shop was closed until noon or even a little later. Two notable finds: a cathedral with palm trees (which was both beautiful and novel), and café bombon (espresso and sweetened condensed milk in equal parts; look for it at your local Cafe Artigiano soon).

Then we took an extra day in Barcelona before we made our way back.

On the way back, we spent a few days at my parents’ place in Ontario. That was fairly uneventful, as a family gathering should be.

All told, we were gone 25 days. That’s just about my limit for travelling: I’m glad to get back to my own bed. However, our bathroom is dirty, and I don’t think the maid is coming.

In Florence, we stumbled on the Galileo Museum, which was very cool: collections of old scientific instruments from Renaissance Europe, including some stuff from Galileo. At the time, science was all about showing off at your benefactor’s parties, so a lot of the instruments were built to look cool. Finding that was a happy accident.

But the biggest highlight, by far, was lunch. We had copied some pages out of Italy for the Gourmet Traveller to bring with us and managed to find one of the places for lunch. Look at our lunch. Just look at it! Best food of the trip, by a wide margin. (Although I’m hoping Naples tomorrow will give it a run for its money.)

Today was Rome, starting with a tour of the Vatican. The Vatican is full of all this, like, old stuff. Mostly with pictures of Jesus and Saint Peter on it. The rest of Rome is full of old stone stuff.

I don’t know why I’m the one writing about Rome, frankly. Kat’s much more into old things than me: I tend to zone out the moment a tour guide mentions a year.

The Sistine Chapel is a helluva thing, though. And I’d like to point out that I Totally Did Not take any illicit pictures of the ceiling by holding my camera in front of me and casually pressing the shutter.

Tomorrow: Naples.

Today was our first port day, and it pretty much started off as moneyed as can be: we docked amongst mega-yachts on the floating pier in Monte Carlo, Monaco. Monte Carlo was pretty much as we imagined it – everywhere you turned there were either yachts, mega-yachts, Porsches, Lambourginis, Ferraris or Rolls Royces! And then there was little ol’ us, in our flip flops and birks! Since we do not, and will likely never, have enough $$ to actually DO anything in Monte Carlo, we did the one cool free thing we could think of – walk the Monte Carlo F1 circuit. The circuit snakes along the waterfront, around the casino (which we walked into but didn’t play – $5 minimum on the slots!), and underneath the Grace Kelly Theater and then back to the waterfront.

After our leisurely stroll, we headed back to the ship to join our first shore excursion – a bus trip into Nice, France. While on the bus we drove by the villas of Elton John, Diana Ross, Bono, the late Yves Saint Laurent (which had a LONG escalator down to the water), and Greta Garbo. This villa was where Grace Kelly met Prince Rainier. We also drove along the same stretch of road that claimed the life of Grace Kelly on the actual anniversary of her death. Upon arriving in Nice, we then changed modes of transportation to what Greg called “the most embarrassing mode of transportation ever” – a little white tourist train, complete with build-in audio headsets! We toured Vieux Nice on the train and even saw where Angelica used to eat gelato when she was here!

Tomorrow we will be visiting Florence, Italy, where I’m hoping to find a trippai, a street vendor selling tripe!

Edit from Greg: the full list of impressive cars I remember seeing: a Ferrari 599, two Tesla Roadsters, Porsche 356 (from about 1960), Rolls Royce Phantom Drophead, Lamborghini Giardo (I think), Austin Martin DB9, Ferrari 430, and various AMG Mercedes and Porches. At one point, a Mazda RX-8 went by and I thought “well, that’s a little cheap, isn’t it?”

In contrast, the last three days we’ve spent in Barcelona have been sunny and hot. We’ve eaten our way around the city and have seen many of its breath-taking sights. We had fruit at Mercat de la Boqueria (food market), lunched in the Barri Gotic near the Catedral de Barcelona, had tapas just off of La Rambla (Taller de Tapas is very good!), saw the monument to Christopher Columbus (who happens to be pointing the wrong way if he’s supposed to be pointing towards the New World), had paella on the Barceloneta beach, and had traditional Catalan food. In between meals we found time to visit Antoni Gaudi’s unfinished Sagrada Familia and the Olympic stadiums and arenas on Monjuic. So yes, we’re definitely enjoying the food and the sights here in Barcelona. We’re saving La Ribera neighborhood, which has a Catalan gothic church and the first covered food market in Barcelona, for our last day in Europe.

It’s an interesting comparison between London and Barcelona. In London, we didn’t find the food all that exciting (although I did enjoy the pies and pasties), but then again, we really didn’t see any British people eat (just drink). In Barcelona the food is amazing, and everywhere you look people are eating (and drinking) at all times of the day.

Tomorrow we board the Norwegian Jade for our Mediterranean cruise. Looking forward to crepes in Nice, tripe in Florence (at least I am, not sure about Greg) and pizza in Naples!

I’m actually enjoying what feels like a vacation from the vacation. I walked around Brighton and the university. Read a bunch. Surfed the web. Good stuff.

But as I near in on my third day at the university, I’m starting to feel like a hunter-gatherer: most of my time is being spent trying to ensure an adequate food supply.

I was prepared to come to England and learn that everything I had heard about British food was exaggerated. I really was.

But, the food options available to me (here and London) seem to fall roughly into three categories: (1) pub food, (2) pre-wrapped sandwiches, and (3) restaurants that are too expensive for an average meal. There is also a minor fourth category: (4) food from elsewhere on the planet, adapted to British tastes.

(1) The pub food is good, for what it is: unseasoned meat and starch. For example, pies (meat filling and crust) and fish and chips (right there in the name). I’ll also throw into this category the full breakfast and while there is a certain awesomeness to it, it’s still fundamentally meat and starch. This can only sustain one for so long: barely a vegetable to be seen.

(2) Douglas Adams was certainly exaggerating somewhat, but this quote rings true:

There is a feeling which persists in England that making a sandwich interesting, attractive, or in any way pleasant to eat is something sinful that only foreigners do.

‘Make ‘em dry,’ is the instruction buried somewhere in the collective national consciousness, ‘make ‘em rubbery. If you have to keep the buggers fresh, do it by washing ‘em once a week.’

Marks and Spencer seem to have been able to step cautiously away from this advice, but one store can only stray so far outside the norm.

(3) We did have a very nice meal in London at a place that was a little too expensive to go to regularly. Oddly, it was still full of men standing around, drinking beer, but not eating.

(4) In an effort to break into option 4, I just bought a “mexican bean wrap”. Much to my dismay, it was actually a cleverly-disguised option 2 sandwich. It was a pita (!) containing about a tablespoon of bean-like substance (with the volume of the thing being made up by pita, not filling). The pita was stale enough that the term “steel reinforced” came to mind.

Really, Marks and Spencer has been keeping me alive. A few days ago, Kat and I got a couple of cornish pasties (pub-style meat + dough) and some prepared food from M&S to round out a meal. I took one bite of some pasta salad and realized that the parsley on it was both green and uncooked. I was so happy to have a vegetable (small though it was) that I turned to Kat and said words to the effect of “this is mine and you can’t have any!” I did eventually share.