The part of China’s arguably most famous landmark we visited was the Great Wall of Badaling, the most visited section of the wall, likely due to its proximity to Beijing, and the first part to be opened up for tourism in 1957. The area around Badaling these days sports hotels, restaurants, and train stations. In 1972 it was at Badaling that Nixon walked upon the Great Wall during his historical visit to China.

From our bus we walked onto a flat part of the wall and gathered around our guide to hear a little more of where we were. The Great Wall isn’t a single wall at all but many connected ones that partitioned off sections of the land and served multiple purposes: defence, immigration control, border controls for taxation, and quicker and more direct transportation across the land. The Badaling Wall was built in the early sixteenth century during the Ming Dynasty when most of the more well-known sections were constructed, although walls were built in China from as far back as the seventh century BCE, typically in localised sections until the first Chinese emperor connected them around five hundred years later.

It was during the Ming Dynasty that the Great Wall began to be truly fortified following defeats against and an inability to truly suppress the Mongols to the north of the country. Bricks and stone began to be used for the first time, turning the wall into a formidable and impressive defence against raids. Large watchtowers were built to allow for rapid signalling of attacks, and barracks and garrisons were put in place to allow for rapid deployment of troops.

After our guide had completed her general talk about the Great Wall she gave us a time to all meet up and indicated that there were options to either head up the wall on our own or to take a look at the visitors centre and shops. We hadn’t come all this way just to stand on a small section of wall – fabulous though that was – and, while we’d have loved to see the visitors centre if we had more time, this would be a fairly fleeting trip to this site and we wanted to make the most of it. From memory I would say that around half our bus opted not to walk along the wall and that can be explained by age with the pair of us at the time being the youngest on that pre-cruise tour by a couple of decades.

There were a couple of surprises with this part of the Great Wall of China. The first was just how wide it was in places; you could easily get eight to ten people abreast. You know that the wall is on a huge scale (even if the claim that you can see the Great Wall of China from space is only true with high magnification) but you only think of that in terms of length until you’re standing there. Secondly was the steepness and surface. The steepness varied as the wall followed the contours of the surrounding mountains, of course, but at times there were steps and others sloped paving. We found the sloped paving particularly awkward to walk up and quite how tricky it would be in the rain or if any part of it snowed over or iced over beggars belief.

At one point on the walk along the wall, as we stopped to give our aching calves a rest and catch our breath, I caught the eye of a Chinese man, a little younger than us and also standing with hands on hips and puffing slightly. Our view was briefly interrupted by another man, probably in his seventies or eighties, stomping between us upwards at a tremendous pace with no sign of effort on his face at all. My fellow rester and I both looked at each other, smiled, and shook our heads with admiration. Climbing the Great Wall of China was not a task for the young, it seemed.

Knowing how long we had until we needed to return to meet our guide, bus, and fellow travellers we allowed ourselves twenty five minutes of walking – with several rests and not a very high rate of speed, naturally; we’re not fit now and we weren’t fit then either – to get as far and as high as we could along the Great Wall of China at Badaling. The views were fabulous when we finally decided we’d need to head back.

We probably had enough time to make it another one or two fortified towers further along the Great Wall and I recall seeing at least one person from our tour bus doing just that but we were happy enough with the short distance we’d managed to cover. I absolutely wouldn’t hesitate to come back for a visit with more time to head along further or to see another part of the wall but we were extraordinarily pleased with what we achieved at Badaling. Only a couple of days before this point neither of us had left the country together nor had we done so separately without parents, and it was quite remarkable to find ourselves standing on a section of the Great Wall of China, seeing hazy mountains disappearing in folds towards the horizon.

We headed back down, taking care especially on the sloped sections of the wall, and I made sure to grab photos along the way of the surge of tourists from all over China doing just what we’d done.

Our descent took around fifteen minutes which is testament to just how much more effort we’d expended heading up. At the base we had a chance to stand around and wait for a few minutes while our group of fellow, pre-cruise passengers slowly congregated, and for our guide to do a head count half a dozen times. On the hillside nearby there was a sign of the recent Beijing Olympic Games that had taken place; we’d visited the National Aquatics Centre and the Bird’s Nest Olympic Stadium just the day before.

From our meeting point at the base of the wall we were then led to where the bus would swing around to pick us up, an area featuring a contrast of architecture with the modern eruption of buildings to service the tourism industry in this part of the world.

The bus ride back to Beijing took another hour and afforded us a different view of the Chinese landscape as we headed away from the incredibly impressive Great Wall of China. I’ve never been one to take many photos from buses because I don’t like the dirt and reflections and inevitable issues with ensuring fast enough shutter speed that come from accounting for motion but there were a couple of interesting views I snapped on the journey too.

Our immediate next stop was to a restaurant which, like most it seems, was guarded by a stone lion. A combined post about the meals in Chinese restaurants that were included in this pre-cruise tour can be found here: Beijing Restaurants.

The afternoon of this second day in the Chinese capital would see us pay a visit to The Summer Palace.

Thanks to the time of the year that we visited the grass was very green and we were afforded lovely skyscapes of blue and white, all of which made for some attractive landscape photography in the area.

Of course, no visit to a Roman fortification would be a visit without an image of a phallus. Those Romans sure did like their phalluses.

A little bit of history of the Summer Palace because everyone likes a little bit of history just before they see all the pretty pictures and get some good old-fashioned wanderlust coursing through their veins.

The Summer Palace can date its origins back to the middle of the twelfth century although at that time it was simply the site of some minor palaces and temples taking advantage of the natural springs and lakes nearby for pleasing views. It wasn’t until the Qing dynasty and late into the eighteenth century that serious expansion of the lakes to improve water supply to the city took place and the transformation of the area into a collection of imperial gardens, palaces, and temples as the Summer Palace was completed. The design of the palace grounds was grounded in Chinese mythology with dragons and mountains represented, but maintenance of the complex was high and it soon fell into disrepair.

In the latter half of the nineteenth century French and British forces looted the palace during the Second Opium War. The nearby Old Summer Palace was burned down at this time on the orders of Lord Elgin (son of the other Lord Elgin, famous (infamous if you’re Greek) for his appropriation of the Elgin Marbles for the British government) in retaliation for the Chinese torturing and murdering European and Indian prisoners. The twentieth century saw the Boxer Rebellion cause serious damage to the palace (although it was restored soon after) and, after the Last Emperor (you might have seen him in the movie of the same name) abdicated, the Summer Palace became first private property and then a public park. For a short period after the Second World War the Summer Palace housed the Central Party School for the Communist Party.

The history lesson is over.

We arrived on the eastern side of the Summer Palace and our visit of a few hours was only enough to take in a very small section of the area. You could easily spend over half a day here if you were staying in Beijing. We started off with a visit to the Renshoudian. Also known as the Hall of Benevolence and Longevity this was a collection of buildings – temple, palace, halls with ancient artifacts – around a courtyard garden area filled with bronze sculptures and large rocks called Taihu Stones.

The Taihu Stones and their distinctive shapes are formed by the action of pebbles constantly rubbing on larger rocks through rushing water action creating holes in the larger structure, and were considered lucky. Many were brought to the Summer Palace at great expense.

A prominent bronze sculpture caught many of the tourists’ attentions. This was a Qilin. Often translated as “unicorn” the Qilin clearly isn’t one because I’ve got the ability to count horns and can reach the number two with consummate ease.

You’d be hard-pressed to tour an ancient Chinese site and not see some motif or relief work representing dragons and we weren’t disappointed with some of the stone decorations on show in this first section of the Summer Palace that we visited.

From the Renshoudian we headed roughly southwest towards the lake that makes up most of the Summer Palace landscape. This took us through the Wenchang Pavilion, constructed like a huge city gate and with a nearby hall containing more artifacts.

We didn’t stop at the pavilion as Kunming Lake was our destination. It’s possible to hire boats for personal use, either pedal or electric-powered ones, but there are larger vessels that can take groups of tourists on circuits of the lake too and it was the latter option that our Princess Cruises-organised tour directed us to.

A quick apology here for the state of the photographs of Kunming Lake at the Summer Palace. Beijing is well-known for its smog, although our 2008 visit to China not long after the Olympics meant that pollution levels were pretty low during our three days there. However, with this being November and the sun setting reasonably early in the evening and there still being some smog, even if it wasn’t particularly noticeable to us at the time, a lot of the pictures taken before and during our boat ride around the lake ended up shooting into the low sun coming through smog and reflecting off water. The result is what you’ll see below for a lot of shots: washed-out colours heavily leaning towards the yellow and orange hues, and very little dark detail. As the saying goes, it is what it is.

We boarded a boat not far from Wenchang Pavilion on the east side of Kunming Lake. Looking to the north we could see a large buddhist temple. South there was a long bridge with numerous arches, and we would soon be sailing past both of them.

Our pleasant, gentle circuit of the shallow, artificial lake took place in an anti-clockwise direction so the first sight we passed was the towering complex on the northern shore. This was Foxiang Ge (Tower of Buddhist Incense, or Tower of the Fragrance of the Buddha). This building was one of those burned down by Anglo-French forces but later rebuilt and presently comprises three, eight-sided storeys on a twenty-metre-deep stone base. The temple houses a statue of the thousand-handed Guanshiyin Buddha.

West of the buddhist temple was a very unusual sight. This was the Marble Boat (also known as the Boat of Purity and Ease). Serving as a tea house with fabulous views over Kunming Lake now, this was originally a wooden structure on a stone base but like much in the area was destroyed by arson during the Second Opium War. Its reconstruction took place under the instruction of Empress Dowager Cixi and was likely through funds originally earmarked for rebuilding the navy. Despite its appearance and name, the Marble Boat is still made from wood but is now painted convincingly to resemble stone. It incorporates clever drainage systems that funnel rainwater through hollow columns.

The lake with three islands is important symbology in China and as we continued our scenic boat ride around the lake we saw numerous bridges connecting those islands. Interestingly, each bridge was very different in design. Of the smaller bridges that we saw the one that stood out most was Yudai, known as the Jade Belt Bridge. Made from marble, its shape is designed to resemble the simple bridges of the southern Chinese countryside but its unusually high clearance was a deliberate feature to allow the Qianlong Emperor to pass under it on his dragon boat.

The largest of the bridges on Kunming Lake is visible from pretty much any point along the lake’s shoreline. Shiqi Kong Qiao gets its name from its design, the literal translation being Seventeen-Arch Bridge. The bridge is one hundred and fifty metres long, making it the longest bridge in any Chinese imperial garden, and it connects the mainland to Nanhu Island. The railings on the bridge incorporate five hundred stone lions in different poses. A variety of halls, temples, and towers dotted the small island, each filling a scenic location on the landmass in which to enjoy the views of the Summer Palace in every direction, and as we gently motored past Nanhu on its north side we passed Hanxu Hall which directly faces the Buddhist tower on the shore of the lake.

Stepping ashore we had time to see one more interesting item before departing. The Kunlun Stone Tablet is inscribed with a poem written by the Qianlong Emperor and describes how the shores of the lakes changed during his years of coming to the Summer Palace and especially enjoying his time on and around Kunming Lake.

And that brought our time visiting the Summer Palace in Beijing to a close with just a short wait outside the main entrance while we waited for our bus to find us. It was a short visit of only a couple of hours that really barely scratched the surface of what there is to see at this tourist spot. If I were returning now then I’d like to have spent more time in the buildings looking at the artifacts on display and a look inside the imposing Buddhist temple would be a must too, but as a taster of what to see and as part of a combination of historical trips in one day in the pre-cruise package hosted by Princess Cruises then this was a fantastic trip.

We would have just one more day in Beijing before our cruise on Diamond Princess but it would be a very full one indeed.

The main draw of Lulworth Cove other than knowing you’re getting fresh air and exercise is Durdle Door, the natural, limestone arch jutting out into the sea.

We entered through the Meridian Gate, the largest of the gates into and out of the Forbidden City. This gate comprises three central arches and two either side of them, with the centremost of the central arches being the largest and formerly reserved for the Emperor. They had big emperors back then, I’m guessing.

This brought us into the southern section of the Forbidden City, known as the Outer Court. The first area we found ourselves in was a large, open courtyard area with buildings left and right, a winding, artificial stream crossing the space spanned by ornately decorated bridges, and a gate with a large hall beyond it directly ahead. Naturally, this was a very popular tourist destination so the interior of the palace complex was filled with a throng of people, almost all of whom were Chinese, some undoubtedly local to the Beijing area but many, as we’d discovered on other trips, who would have come from all over China to visit the country’s capital’s historical sights.

The Forbidden City was constructed between 1406 and 1420 to be the state residence of the emperor from the Ming to the Qing dynasties (until 1924). The outer walls, themselves protected by a moat, are packed earth strengthened with bricks, but the interior buildings comprise enough wood to have the complex regarded as the largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures in the world. Those buildings number just under a thousand, with the majority of them being in the northern section of the structure. The layout of the Forbidden City roughly follows a wide central route north to south with side-routes consisting of additional halls and palaces either side, and as has already been mentioned, there is an approximately even split between the more ceremonial southern section (the Outer Court) and the more residential Inner Court in the northern portion. With only a few hours allocated, our visit to the Forbidden City would mostly see us take a direct, central route from the southern gate to the northern one.

Crossing over one of the several bridges we approached the Gate of Supreme Harmony. Although not obvious to our eyes, this gate was a later addition to the Forbidden City with the original structure having burnt down in the late 1880s and the building now present having been reconstructed in 1894. Either side of the approach to the gate were bronze lion sculptures on white marble plinths. To the left was a female lion, identified by the lion cub under her left paw and representing abundant offspring for the emperor. To the right was a male lion which had a globe under its right paw symbolising ruling the world.

We passed through the gate and into the next courtyard area which led towards the largest hall in the Forbidden City and one of the largest wooden structures in China, the Hall of Supreme Harmony. Like all wooden buildings it is susceptible to fire and needed to be rebuilt in 1697.

Time to draw attention to something you might or might not have spotted and which you might or might not be interested in but about which I might or might not care whether you do. Official buildings – palaces, some temples, some government buildings – were permitted to decorate the sloping edges of their roofs with lines of figurines. At the front is a man riding a phoenix while at the rear is an imperial dragon, and in-between are a number of figures, with more important buildings having more figures. The maximum number of figures is nine but the only building in China to have ten, as you can see in the photo below, is the Hall of Supreme Harmony because it housed the emperor’s throne. The tenth figurine is unique in Chinese architecture. The colour of the roof tiles is also significant as yellow was reserved for the emperor, hence nearly all the tiles in the Forbidden City being that colour.

Around the great hall were bronze sculptures of turtles and cranes, both representing longevity. These were constructed with hollow interiors in order that incense could be burned for ceremonies, with the smoke rising from the creatures’ mouths.

A symbol that caught our eyes on more than one occasion was the swastika which in Asian countries still represents longevity and divinity but which, of course, in its right-facing, tilted variation has taken on a far more unpleasant meaning in the west.

We passed through the Hall of Supreme Harmony. Some photos were taken inside but with it being a lot darker than the exterior and flash photography not being allowed and us shuffling along with the crowd in a way that made it difficult to stop, they didn’t really come out well at all, and I’m far too much of a perfectionist to share their blurry noisiness with you.

Outside, as we gathered ahead of making our way through the northern section of the Forbidden City, I panned my camera around and snapped a shot which happened to be a Chinese girl talking to a boy of a similar age. Now, the thing about my camera is, it’s noisy. That mirror snapping back for the shot can be very loud in some situations and this was obviously one because the girl spun around at the sound and faced me. For one heart-stopping moment I thought I was about to start an international incident on our very first trip abroad together but to my utter joy she flashed me a big smile and adopted a pose instead. I swung the camera back up, snapped again, we both smiled at each other, I bowed because that’s the kind of thing you do when you’re flustered, and, yes, this still remains one of my most favourite memories of all the travelling we’ve done around the world.

The next major building we came to was the Palace of Heavenly Purity which indicated that we’d crossed the imaginary line between the northern and southern sections of the Forbidden City, meaning we were now in the Inner Court of the palace complex. This was the residence of the emperor for a long period and featured twenty seven beds that were slept in at random as a security measure.

Our tour of Beijing’s Forbidden City then veered off from the direct route south-to-north to pay a quick visit to some of the buildings to the west of the Palace of Heavenly Purity. This included the Hall of Mental Cultivation in which the emperor’s bedroom was located after the tradition of picking a different bed from twenty seven every night became too tedious to follow. The open courtyards of the southern section of the complex were nowhere to be seen in this part, with narrower alleys compressing the crowd around us more, but there were plenty of opportunities to see some close-up details of the architecture and design present.

The final part of the Forbidden City we took a look at was the Imperial Garden. This was a compact space for the emperor’s family to relax in, with a number of pavilions dotted around and attractive plant-life as you can imagine (or, if you don’t fancy imagining it, as you can see below). Many of the trees in the garden are hundreds of years old and there are items that appear to be trees but which are really stone. The major pavilions represent the four seasons in one way or another.

We might have had more time to explore some of the Forbidden City buildings – maybe not; we perhaps just overran our time anyway – but at this point on our excursion we were asked by the tour guide to all gather together near one wall and not move. The reason for this was that one member of our group had gone missing; an older, American gentleman. Our tour guide and the missing man’s wife headed off together and we were quite some time waiting before they returned with him in tow. Getting turned around, especially in the maze of alleys in the Inner Court wouldn’t have been too difficult so we could understand this and felt some sympathy, although that sympathy would be stretched a little over the course of this trip to Asia as he managed to get lost again on the following day and twice more while actually on the cruise ship.

All together once more we made our way from the garden and through the northern gate, the Gate of Divine Might, which offered up a lovely view of Jingshan Park. Jingshan Park was originally private gardens for the emperor but was opened to the public in 1928; its main focal point is the hill which is artificial, having been made from the soil excavated to create moats and lakes elsewhere.

After a break for lunch in a nearby restaurant the final attraction on the full day’s tour of Beijing would be a ride to the Hutongs and a visit to a local’s house.

A very quick recap in case you can’t be bothered to read about the trip so far: when we booked this cruise with Princess (fairly close to cruise date) it was nearly five years after our first and only other cruise leaving us in the position of having to learn what it is to travel by cruise ship all over again. We’d decided very early on that we’d be booking excursions as much as possible because we’re generally nosey people with a keen interest in history and culture but for this very first port stop in the very first foreign country we’d visited since our honeymoon half a decade earlier nothing jumped out at us. Thus it was that our first visit of a few hours to Norway would be on foot and with no firm plan at all. In later years we would be far more disciplined in researching just what we might be able to do on our own if the need arose but with us being travelling noobs all over again we probably didn’t make the most of our day ashore. There will always be another time.

Princess provided free shuttle buses to allow those of us not on organised excursions to get from Crown Princess into the city. We were dropped off by the city’s octagonal lake, Lille Lungegårdsvannet, made a note of when the buses would be returning to the ship, tutted mildly at the still overcast and lightly spitting weather conditions, and mostly followed the direction of more seasoned travellers also departing the vehicle to do their own thing.

Heading roughly west we crossed over a road and passed through Julemarked Byparken, a small public park with a few sculptures and statues as well as a prominent pavilion. Just beyond that was a modern, pedestrianised area lined with various upmarket stores and punctuated by stone sculptures and water features. The main square of Bergen, Torgallmenningen, was just off this area and it was through this that we next walked.

At the northern end of Torgallmenningen was the Sailor’s Monument, a large sculpture honouring sailors from different eras of Norway’s past.

Continuing on a straight line past the monument to sailors we approached Bergen’s fish market area which is unsurprisingly right by the waterfront area. My wife loves the smell of fresh fish, she loves seafood; I like fish, I can’t stand seafood, and the smell of fresh fish turns my stomach. We were never going to really stop at the fish market area because it’s not like you can buy some fish and take it back aboard the cruise ship to keep for a week until you’re home. Instead, we wandered past it and hugged the road along where the boats were docked, including a small Viking vessel.

The area of Bergen just beyond the fish market and opposite the water was called Bryggen and it’s a UNESCO World Cultural Site. Bryggen was the area in which Bergen was first founded in the eleventh century before expansion but its look and feel date to the middle of the fourteenth century onwards when this part of the city became a trading post for the Hanseatic League. What are now generally shops and locations for local craftspeople to work in were formerly warehouses and merchant houses for the League. The colourful wooden buildings still bear the signs of their previous lives and the narrow alleys and open spaces within the buildings, either lined with wooden boardwalks or cobbles, made for a lovely little wander.

We’re the sort of people who like to spend money in the places we’re travelling, not just spend it getting to and from them, so we were pleased to find a local jewellery workshop in this part of Bergen and my wife bought a hefty, silver ring. My wife tried the ring on, said it was lovely, acknowledged that she understood the stone wasn’t a diamond (for the price we were paying: well, duh!), said she’d love it, and the man there smiled and said he’d polish the piece of jewellery for her. This triggered a loud and indignant “Well, you didn’t offer to polish mine!” from an American woman who’d just bought something too. I guess we just bring out the best in people.

Our no-plan-just-wander tour of Bergen saw us next heading eastwards in a loop to get back roughly to where we’d been dropped off. We weren’t short for time but we were definitely still in a finding-our-feet phase of travelling. These days we would plan things a lot more, have set ideas where we’d want to be, make sure to spend as much time in port as possible, but back then we wanted to be certain that we’d be safely aboard ship in plenty of time.

Our walking route took us past some fairly uninteresting buildings and streets until we came out on Vetrlidsallmeningen where we were greeted by the sight of a long queue of – we assume – passengers from our ship waiting to board the Fløibanen funicular train to the top of the hill overlooking Bergen. On a clear day I imagine the sight is something worth seeing but with the cloud still partially obscuring the hilltop (although the light rain had ceased by this time) we were very glad that we hadn’t paid to do this on our own or as an excursion offered by the cruise line.

We cut through the line of people waiting to board the funicular and found ourselves in another old part of the city of Bergen. Wooden buildings and cobbled streets dominated, although there was more of an overall whiteness to the buildings rather than the varied colours of the buildings that had belonged to the Hanseatic League. This was Lille Øvregaten in the district of Vågsbunnen and it was one of the oldest parts of Bergen. In medieval times this was where you could find inns, goldsmiths, tailors, and booksellers, and it was also the home of cobblers until they found their own street in the fourteenth century.

Korskirken (or the Holy Cross Church) caught our eyes, its stone structure most likely being designed to do precisely that amongst all the wooden buildings that surrounded it. Its name comes not from its shape (although it is cruciform) but because it once housed relics of the True Cross (the somewhat unlikely alleged remnants of the cross on which Jesus was crucified) although these were stolen by Denmark who’d skipped the bit about not doing that in the commandments. The church was damaged in fires in 1198, 1248, 1413, 1582, 1623, 1640, and 1702 so not the greatest of track records when all’s said and done.

We continued heading roughly east and southeast through various streets in Bergen on our walk back towards the lake near where we’d been first dropped. There was a little bit of street art to be seen but nothing terribly good with the majority of work falling firmly in that unthinking graffiti category instead. One interesting moment was stumbling upon a group being filmed for something; it involved holding up cards with words on them then everyone waving Danish flags. Your guess is as good as mine.

Not far from the lake we made a stop at a bar with outdoor seating (as the weather was quite pleasant now) just so we could say that we’d had a Norwegian beer in Norway. Well, we can say that we’ve done it but it wasn’t a particularly nice experience in Bergen because social smoking was a big thing there. In later years (travelling in Europe in particular) we’d run into this problem with smoking in public a lot. Is it asking too much for smokers to simply lower themselves into a Pit of Shame whenever they want to light up? Anyway, we drank up quickly and decided to have one last short wander around before making our way back to the shuttle bus.

We made a quick circuit of Lille Lungegårdsvannet. Interesting pieces of art in the vicinity included Dansk Pige (or Danish Girl) by Gerhard Henning, and the fabulous, abstract, steel sculpture by Knut Steen to memorialise King Olaf Kyrre.

We had a quick look at the modern shops along the pedestrianised area we’d walked through earlier in the day but there was nothing to grab our attention.

With the weather being a little more favourable I took a couple of minutes to grab some additional photos around Julemarked Byparken once more. As public parks go it’s a pretty small one. To the north of the centrally-located pavilion was a statue to Edvard Grieg which we’d noticed earlier but on this second pass through we spotted an abstract piece of work that was more interesting to look at. This was a sculpture to another Norwegian composer, albeit a far less familiar one I’ll warrant, Harald Sæverud.

We decided to call it a day in Bergen at this point so walked through the Festplassen, the open air area beside the lake which often hosts circuses, amusement parks, festivals, and a regular pre-Christmas candle party. Best not to think too much about what the average Norwegian does at a candle party.

That concluded our walk around Bergen. We didn’t have long to wait until the shuttle bus returned us to Crown Princess. We had successfully negotiated our first day ashore on a cruise in five years and had the luxury of knowing that everywhere else we’d stop in Norway would include an organised tour meaning the chances of us getting left behind in any port were practically none.

We happened to visit on one of the days when graduation was taking place which made for some nice people-watching.

The main draw of Bath, though, was its Roman Baths, built on what was an ancient shrine to the Goddess Sulis (hence Bath’s roman name of Aquæ Sulis).

Unfortunately for me it had also been spitting with rain on the day we were visiting this particular Welsh castle; not enough to put a hood on the camera or enough to make me check the front of the lens, sadly, which is why one or two drops got on the front and there is just a hint of blurring in the following pictures of Caernarfon Castle.

We also had time for a little bit of a wander into the town where we had some lunch at one of the pubs. Some quizzical looks passed between the pair of us at the pub’s less-than-politically-correct name. You don’t like to judge in these situations but you can’t help but come to certain conclusions.

The Temple of Heaven in Beijing is large and spacious, but so much of that space was filled with people that our arrival was to ripples of noise from every direction; different types of music overlapping; distant singing; that undulating murmur of thousands of people engaged in conversations. Our guide had already explained that this was one of the main meeting places for locals to come and engage in social activities including exercise, dancing, singing, playing games, and even just avoiding solitude for some of the more elderly citizens. It was a friendly, welcoming riot.

Note: videos in this post have been removed, hopefully temporarily, while a replacement hosting solution that doesn’t use multibillion companies trying to fleece even more profits out of people is sought.

After watching some of the local Chinese men and women performing some Tai Chi we were led, slowly, through a long, covered walkway area, absolutely rammed with people. It was a mix of tour groups (a few international groups such as our own, but the majority coming from elsewhere in mainland China to see their nation’s capital) and locals filling this space, with the latter set using some benches and shade to take part in games of dominoes or Mahjong or cards, singing, dancing, or engaging in crafts including knitting. Fabulously noisy, filled with life. It’s an experience I cannot recommend highly enough if you ever visit Beijing.

Passing through the covered walkway of activities we then approached the most impressive structure in the complex, a building that we originally thought was the Temple of Heaven itself but was in fact the Hall Of Prayer For Good Harvests. No idea what it was used for but if I had to guess I’d say it was perhaps some kind of hall, maybe one in which people could pray and ask for harvests, and most likely good ones. Circular and built on a marbled base, the hall is completely wooden and constructed without using nails. The one seen today dates from the late nineteenth century as the previous building on this spot was struck by lightning and burned down.

As is the way with many of these excursions you’ll take when you choose to cruise, we then had some free time to explore as we wanted before meeting back at the entrance to the public park. The architecture of the buildings was undeniably fabulous but we’d seen plenty of this style in Beijing over the previous few days. On the other hand, the Chinese people taking part in their social activities were utterly enthralling so while many others in our tour group took a look around the halls either side of the most impressive, multi-tiered one we were all stood around at this point my wife and I decided to head for some of the open spaces in which people were dancing or exercising instead.

One thing we spotted around this time was an argument breaking out between a group of men and women in their seventies, seemingly over cheating in dominoes as far as we could tell. Raised voices and a little bit of shoving was surprisingly lovely to witness.

The following video is one that just makes my heart smile. I’m not one for line dancing when it is associated with cowboy hats but older people in China is a whole different matter.

The range of activities was great to see. The Temple of Heaven was a place where you could see that it would suit almost anybody somewhere in the grounds. Right next to the more energetic line dancing there was ballroom dancing on show. We felt at the time and still feel that this sort of group activities place primarily for elder people to meet, enjoy the open air, enjoy the company, enjoy engaging their brains, or get a little bit of physical fitness is something that could really do with appearing in more cities around the world.

The final activity we saw being performed involved lots of ribbon-twirling, just showing that there was a full range of physical exertions or lack thereof on show and represented by the people of Beijing. In addition to looking pretty it was also one of those things that felt very Chinese; not the sort of thing you’d see taking place in a park back home, and isn’t that a fantastic reason to go travelling?

And it wasn’t just the older crowd and tourists from far and wide enjoying everything going on in the Temple of Heaven.

We could easily have spent most of an entire day in the Temple of Heaven in Beijing; it was that engrossing. However, it was now time to meet our bus outside the entrance and bid a fond farewell to the Chinese city. One last sight, and a very pleasing one, was that of a man composing poetry with water on the paving slabs of the ground.

From the Temple of Heaven we had a stop at a restaurant (the one with the seal in the pool on that link) before we were taken down to Tianjin where our very first cruise would commence on Diamond Princess.

As befits a place named the Lake District we headed directly for a lake in order to get out and take a look around. Blue sky, blue water, and vibrant green grass made for some lovely views and opportunities to take plenty of photos as we stretched our legs.

Once we’d had our fill of fresh air and bright colours, and once I’d sated my need to take pictures of the landscape, we jumped back in the car and headed out of the lakeside area towards Grasmere where my wife remembered she’d bought gingerbread as a youngster and wanted to do so again. The weather changed significantly between our walk along the water and our arrival in the village with us being forced to run for cover between buildings but our quest for the gingerbread was a successful one.