Come along with me as I share some of my favorite experiences.
Cruising the Yangtze River and other places!
When I look back at pictures of trips I have taken, sometimes I can’t believe all the places I have been! After my mom died, James and I decided to do a 2-week tour in China. One of the weeks we spent traveling up the Yangtze River on a cruise boat. The second week we flew to northern China and Beijing. We saw wonderful performances and went to amazing museums. We walked along the Great Wall and saw the Terra Cotta Warriors. We had a Peking Duck dinner in Beijing and tried noodles that we had just seen being made. It was a once-in-a-lifetime type of trip.
One of my favorite memories is going to the Chonqing Zoo. Our guide told us we would have to get up early. We rushed to the zoo—it wasn’t open yet, but his friend had given him a key to the entrance. His friend was the person in charge of the pandas! Pandas are fairly laid back, we were told, and they usually don’t wake up and move around until their bamboo dinner comes in from the mountains every day around 11 am. The zookeeper lured them out with apples, so that our group of 30 people had them all to ourselves. It was amazing.
I know a lot about Chinese food. Myra was really into it, and her partner, Harlan, used to go sit at the counter of Chinese restaurants and watch the cooks, to learn how to cook Chinese (before there were YouTube videos my friends!). I often cooked some basic Chinese dishes at the Cactus Club. So you can imagine how fun it was for me to try all the dishes that we got to eat in China for 2 weeks! I will try anything once. And then figure out how to make it. I think I got that habit from my mother.
