After the commotion of Beijing, we were looking forward to spending a few days somewhere quieter. A sacred mountain and the home town of Confucius were on the way to Shanghai and that sounded like the perfect stop. The town of Tai’an still had plenty of energy and the mountain is a pilgrimage for Chinese people so we didn’t really find the peaceful spot we were looking for. We did get to climb up about 7,000 steps, so it was still a productive day.
We arrived on the bullet train from …

After spending a week in two big, modern cities, we went to see some of the history of Japan. To do that, we went to another huge city, but this one was different. Kyoto is one of the only major cities to have been spared massive damage during the war; it was also the capital of Japan for about a thousand years. This means the city has an enormous number of old, in tact, and very impressive buildings. The amount of temples and shrines is overwhelming.
Speaking of very old …

After our 4 day hike, we decided to take the tourist bus to Puno. What’s in Puno? It’s the city on the the Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca. What’s the tourist bus? Instead of taking the direct bus that takes 6 hours, the tourist bus makes 3 or 4 stops at points of interest and takes 10 hours instead. There are actually 3 companies that do this and we kept running into the other tour groups all day, none of the buses were full. What a waste!
Not on the …

As some of you might already know, Machu Picchu has been closed since the mudslides in January. They hope to re-open the trail by April since it is the number one tourist attraction in the entire country. We have wanted to do this hike for a long time, we even bought a Peru guide book in 2002 to plan a trip. We’re finally here and have already paid money towards a hike that’s not available right now. Good thing the Incas built more than one trail (some estimates say they …

We made it to the capital city of the Incas after a long journey through the Lima airport.

When looking up our flight from Rio, we realized that we had about 24 hours to spend in Lima before continuing on to Cusco. We spent the day downtown visiting some churches and museums, and had some great ceviche and picso sours. Back at the airport we had to wait until 4:30am to check in and get on the plane. Unfortunately, they won’t let you past security more than an hour before …

Phil and Meredith were fantastic hosts for our 3 day scramble before we left from LA. Not only did we immediately make a mess of their guest bedroom, we also did laundry and brought various half-used items from our house that we didn’t know what to do with. Hopefully the case of homemade beer, various half bottle of liquor and some wine will make up for some of their inconvenience. Yes our trunk was full.
Sunday:

The four of us plus Jeremy went out for breakfast and headed to San Diego’s Wild …