Jun 17, 2007 10:38
As you all know, I've been traveling an obscene amount the past month. In the last 31 days I have:
•taken 15 plane flights totalling 79 airborne hours, 4 were trans-Pacific and six were international
•slept in 15 beds
•stayed in 12 foreign cities and 2 stateside
•taken 9 intercity coaches
•been on three trains (four if you count the maglev from the Shanghai airport
I have seen (I'm documenting this here for personal purposes becasue I hvae to formally put it together later, this is my brainstorming):
a police dog drinking out of a public toilet (Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport)
the world's fastest train
the wrold's largest kebab (Oriental Pearl Tower, Shanghai)
the world's third tallest building
the world's largest bottle opener (actually the tallest building under contruction, but it's really a bottle opener for God)
original HSBC headquarters, featuring some of the best and most interesting tile work I've ever seen
Shanghai's legendary Bund district
old Shanghai, featuring some beatiful gardens whose name I cannot recall.
a nice village turned into a tourist site due to its bridges, or something
the world's largest wholesale market-50,000 stalls selling 4,000,000 items--all wholesale (Yiwu)
West Lake (Hangzhou, the city Marco Polo declared the most magnificent in the world
Pingyao, an ancient walled city that has remained virtually unchanged for 800 years
Pingyao's old temples
a temple with the largest number of painted statues in the world
Taishan, a sacred Daoist mountain where Confucius declared "the world is small" and Mao said "the East is red"
a really REALLY bad hotel on top of said mountain
numerous factories in Shandong
Tian'anmen Square
The Forbidden City
the Starbucks inside of the Forbidden City
The Great Wall of China
Australian National Museum
Australian Parliament
Sydney Opera House
Taronga Zoo
Sydney Harbor Bridge
Sydney Aquarium
Great Barrier Reef