Is this a good time to travel to Spain?

It’s a fait accompli: we’re going to Spain. Yes, I’ve read about angry Spaniards protesting over the rotten economic situation. And I certainly don’t want to get involved. I haven’t even gotten involved in local (Israeli) demonstrations over the cost of living and so on. Besides – by spending my money, in euros, in Spain, I’m contributing to their economy. So I’m one of the good guys, right?

So the long and the short of it is, we’re flying to Madrid, carrying on to Valencia, stopping there for a few days, in a conveniently located apartment we found on Airbnb, then picking up a rented car and driving south along the coast.

As my readers already know, we don’t just call the last-minute flights company Daka-90  (sorry it’s only in Hebrew), but plan each trip thoroughly in advance: Hubby researches stuff on the Internet, in Michelin and other guides; while I research my wardrobe and break my head over which tops/bottoms/shoes/socks etc to pack, and explore my library to decide which book to take with. Not to mention which face cream, which bag, and so on.

This time, there are two important variables that have varied, or deviated, from the routine:

1. Books. As you know, I am now the proud owner of kindaleh, a.k.a. Kindle Touch 3G . I can take with me three thousand books and not feel it at all. Or at least feel all 215 gr of it. In fact, I now have too much to choose from. Last time we were in Spain, in October 2002, I was reading Tolkien’s The Two Towers, and was just as involved with the fate of Pippin and Merry (who had just escaped the Orcs and were about to  enter the forest of Ents) as I was in the fate of Spain, past and present.

2. During that 2002 trip (2 weeks in Spain & Portugal) I kept a travel journal, like I’ve been doing for years on every trip. So now I could consult my notebook, refresh my memory, and make a note of a few things to pay attention to this time around.

Here are a few select insights from that travel journal:

1. The coffee was good
2. The shrimp were delicious.
3. The salads were awful; most restaurants, cafes etc couldn’t for the life of them put together a decent salad.
4. Meals were between 30 (at a taverna) to 50 (in the hotel) euro.
5. When you’re driving in the mountains, take into account that low clouds can make visibility very poor.
6. Where the speed limit is marked as 80 kmh (50 mph), you can count on locals to drive at 110 at least.
7. Getting off a highway and trying to find your way to your hotel or your hosts can be very tricky. Whether it was Cordoba, Sevilla or Granada, we went round and round in circles until we got it right.
8. Ten years ago, everybody smoked, everywhere. But they were polite about not blowing the smoke in your face, if you asked them (in pantomime; don’t know how to say it Spanish.)
9. My French, Spanish and Italian got mixed-but-not-matched in my head, making it difficult for me to find the right word. However, I got one thing right: It’s cervesa in Spanish. As opposed to birra in Italian & Greek, bière in French, pivo in Slovenian, and something unpronounceable, though vaguely familiar, in Thai and in Chinese. Travel is so mind-broadening.

Hope to be able to tell you more once we get there.

Tips before a trip to China, #3 - Food

“What did you eat in China?” Friends ask me.

Er, Chinese food?...

Well, not exactly. That is to say, not what the average Westerner is used to having at his local Chinese restaurant, be it in New York, London or Tel Aviv. Our travel agency, Oriental Travel, assures its clients that they do not take them, (or us, in this case) to restaurants catering especially to Western tourists and thus offering a commercially-westernized version of Chinese food. Rather, it attempted to take us to places where Chinese tourists – of which there are millions – eat. Indeed, some of the restaurants we were taken to were huge, built to cater to hundreds of people at the same time. That’s because, in the height of the tourist season, hundreds of people eat there at the same time. The size of China is hard to grasp and get used to. Everything is on a huge scale: huge cities, huge office buildings, huge residential apartment blocks, huge flyovers, huge traffic jams and huge restaurants to accommodate a huge number of diners.

If you’re a fussy eater, have special dietary needs, or insist on kosher/vegetarian/vegan/organic food, you’re in trouble. Either reconsider your plans and travel elsewhere; or shut your eyes and just eat. I wouldn’t recommend schlepping tinned food and crackers from home, wherever home is. And I wouldn’t recommend relying on local produce and supermarket food, because you probably won’t know what to buy and how much to pay. Remember – all the labels will be Greek to you (unless you’re Greek, of course, ha-ha, groan). 

Dizzying decor at the dining room of the Crowne Plaza Chengdu Panda Garden

For us, breakfast was the easiest meal to navigate. We stayed at top hotels: The Crowne Plaza Beijing, the Crowne Plaza at Chengdu Panda Garden, The Garden Hotel in Suzhou, the Green Lotus Hotel in Yangshuo, the Guilin Bravo Hotel in Guilin, Day’s Inn in Xi’an, the Mercure in Shanghai, and of course the floating dining room of the Century Sun. Some of these were more sumptuous than others in décor and amenities, but all offered a decent buffet breakfast. I’d say at least 60 or 70 percent of the food was aimed at Chinese tourists, and comprised what to the Western tourist seemed like a full dinner: all sorts of cooked dishes, including soup, vegetables, meat, and unidentified doughy-looking things. Then on the other side of the dining room were the Western-style dishes: bacon and eggs, bread, butter, marge, yogurt, muesli, branflakes, cornflakes, fresh fruit, tinned fruit, a token platter of hard cheese, and would-be baked goods in the shape of croissants, cupcakes, and other baked goods. So far, so good?

Misleadingly pretty pastries at Chengdu Panda Garden Crowne Plaza

Ahem. Things aren’t always what they seem to be. I believe the bacon-and-eggs were fairly bona fide; and the fresh pineapple was delicious. But many of the other items were slightly disappointing. They looked the part, but didn’t taste the part. You took one bite of a cupcake or Danish, and more-likely-than-not left the rest on your plate. As for the coffee and tea – Unspeakable. “What?! “ You say in disbelief, “The TEA in CHINA is not nice? How can that be?” Well, that’s just it. Of all the places in the world, you expect China to have aromatic Chinese tea. Instead, you are served either nondescript teabag tea, or a pale brew tasting like boiled barley. As for the coffee – I find hotel coffee lousy everywhere, so at least it wasn’t a big surprise or let-down. 

Lunch and dinner: On the whole, enough dishes were served at every meal, so that no one left the table hungry. If you didn’t trust the suspicious-looking blobs of meat, you liked the chicken; if you didn’t like the spicy soup, you could have the bland soup with noodles; we all liked the steamed or boiled green veggies; and we all gorged ourselves on the dumplings at the Dumpling Banquet at Defangchag Restaurant in Xi’an. 

Hot pot dinner; notice the pots in front of Colin & Susan

One of the more unique meals was the hot-pot, where each person is served a pot of either very spicy or mild soup (or half a portion of each in the same, partitioned pot), kept a-boiling on a hot-plate; and a platter of thinly sliced raw meat of various kinds, which you plonk into your boiling soup:  Nearby there was a big selection of sauces. Pity we had no way of knowing which was what. “Just smell them,” said Julia, our 14-year-old-looking guide.

Enough about food; don’t know about you, but I’m getting hungry. (But you can see a few more related pics below).

Restaurant-in-an-indoor-garden, Yichang

Enjoying the hot-pot meal. Didn't think to ask whether the aprons were mandatory.

Or you could rely on old, familiar fare: Jane's Pub in Suzhou: Manchester City vs. QPR  on TV and beer:

Jane's Pub Bar, Suzhou

Jane's Pub Bar, Suzhou

 Starbucks in the Old Quarter of Shanghai: Coffee was fine, when you managed to get to the front of the line at the tiny place; but even a simple sandwich with a familiar name, say bacon-lettuce-tomato, has an added local sauce that gives it a distinctly Chinese flavor. Caveat emptor.

Starbucks in Shaghai Old Quarter & Tourist Trap.

(No idea who the people in the pic are; just tired wayfarers like ourselves.)

Tips before a trip to China, #2: Clothes

Clothes : To launder or to simply buy new?

There are two schools of thought. One says – clothes are so cheap in China, just pack the minimum, and buy everything else you need there. When there’s no more room in the suitcase, just leave your old clothes behind.

The other says: I rather like my clothes and feel comfortable in them; don’t wanna leave them behind. Besides, I don’t want to go bargain hunting.

My travel mates and I were of the second persuasion. Which isn’t to say I didn’t buy anything nor yearn to spend a bit more time in Yangshou shops. I bought a couple of skirts (or frocks, as Kathy called them, since they’re dual-purpose) on West Street; a purportedly 100% silk kimono; and a couple of certified 100% silk knit camis in the silk factory in Suzhou, because I’m a sucker for pretty, soft camis. But all that is still a far cry from cramming your suitcase with cheap Chinese merchandise.

river in the center of Yangshou

West Street, Yangshou, during the day

“Cheap” is a trick term. The merchandise is only cheap if you know how to bargain, which I certainly do not. Which is how I ended up paying for the skirts, and a pair of flip-flops, about the same as I’d pay for them in my home town of Rishon LeZion. A rough guide to bargaining is to offer 50% of what the vendor is asking for. You don’t have to know Chinese for that; the vendor types in the sum on his handheld calculator, and you shake your head vigorously and type half that sum. He/she reels with indignation, or insult, or amusement (it’s difficult to tell which) and types in a sum. You make a counter offer. And so it goes until one of you gives up and indicates “okay okay, you win, let’s get on with it!”

Twin Peaks Cafe, West Street, Yangshou. Barely visible at the bottom of the photo: Kathy on the left, Susan on the right.

West Street, Yangshou, at night. The place is hopping!

Another consideration is timing: Say you didn’t pack a cardigan/sweatshirt for a rainy day; or a pretty blouse for a festive evening aboard the cruise ship. How do you know you’ll be close to a decent shop, and have the time, to buy the missing item when you need it? There are no such guarantees on an organized trip; you may want to go shopping, but your tour guide may have made other plans.

Say you’ve decided not to count on shopping. That means you’ll have to do laundry along the way. Doing laundry is fine, provided you’re staying more than one night at the hotel. If you’re staying just one night, the clothes may not be dry by the time you have to pack and check out. Trust me on that. So try to pack clothes that dry quickly and don’t need ironing. But that’s elementary, my dear fellow travelers; surely I don’t have to tell you that.

If you’re staying in a decent hotel, it will offer decent laundry services, which aren’t cheap. We paid 329 yuan for 21 items at The Green Lotus Hotel in Yangshou; and 243 yuan for 24 items aboard the Century Sun cruise ship. Or, you can be adventurous and hire the services of a local washerwoman: 

Woman doing laundry along the Yangtse river

Woman doing laundry along the Yangtse river

Tips before a trip to China, # 1: Learn Chinese

Tip #1:  Before your trip, learn Chinese.

Just kidding. Unless you’re a superb linguist with an affinity for exotic languages, you don’t stand a chance. You’ll be lucky if you master the pronunciation of a few basic phrases such as nee hao – hello; zow sha how – good morning, and pee jaw – beer. And even then, you probably won’t get the intonation right and the locals will either laugh out loud or stare at you blankly. The famous example has to do with the various meanings of the word ma, which can mean – according to the tone – mother, horse, insult, and possibly a few other meanings. 

As we were strolling the paths of the Panda Sanctuary, Pete and I happened to muse aloud how long it would take a foreigner like us to learn basic Chinese; enough to get along on a daily basis. A young French chap nearby who overheard us smiled and said knowingly, based on his own personal experience, “Two years.” 

Panda Sanctuary, Chengdu. No connection with reading and writing Chinese.

But even more than the spoken language, it’s the written language that mystifies me. As we drove by a Sheraton hotel in the center of Beijing, I looked at its name in Chinese characters:

 How is it, I wondered, that three simple syllables in English – shé, rah, ton -- each in itself without any meaning -- get transformed into a row of nine complex drawings?

Or consider my own name, consisting of two super-simple syllables: ni – na. On our visit to the lovely park of the Big Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi’an, we were given a fascinating talk and demonstration of the development of Chinese script by a charming artist and teacher, whose name I’m sorry to say I didn’t write down. He then kindly wrote our names for us, with brush and ink, on rice paper. My name, if you please, is:

 Just imagine if I managed to adopt this as my signature! I think my checks would be safe from attempted forgery.

But seriously: With a good teacher, you can definitely learn to identify a few helpful words. Such as the signs for Gents and Ladies that appear on toilets. In the big cities the relevant doors have a standard drawing of a male and female figure, and/or carry the English words Male and Female. But out in the country they often only carry the Chinese characters. Hint: the Ladies toilets is on the right. Why? Because the woman is always right, quoth our guide :-)

At the Big Wild Goose Pagoda visitors' center; the artist at work

At the Big Wild Goose Pagoda visitors' center; the sign for "woman"