Category: travel

Tirana, Albania (Day 1, morning)

When I woke up in Tirana, I had a vague plan to walk around and see some of the sites I’d seen in a couple of listicles on my phone in the airport while waiting to board the plane in Frankfurt. I had no idea just how far I’d walk, or how much I’d see!

Luckily, the hotel was right in the city center, and the weather was fantastic: a little cold, but amazingly bright and sunny, and I saw in real life almost everything the internet told me to look for.

See below for photos of:

  • Tirana Marriott Hotel, Air Albania Stadium, and some university buildings
  • Dëshmorët e Kombit Boulevard
  • The Pyramid of Tirana
  • The Lana River at Dëshmorët e Kombit Boulevard
  • Rinia Park and the Taiwan Center

Continue reading Tirana, Albania (Day 1, morning)

A Trip from Hangzhou, China to Tirana, Albania

We did not go to Albania on a train. That was just the first part of a long journey!

I made this on https://www.greatcirclemap.com/. (Yeah, we flew over Russia…)

For the first time in a long time, I got on a plane (two planes, actually) to go somewhere for fun that wasn’t my hometown. But first I got in a taxi, and on a train, and in another taxi, and spent the night in an airport hotel, and took a shuttle bus, lol.

Why Albania? Siqi was invited to a workshop, and I decided to take leave from work and go too. I’d never been to Albania!

We left on the evening of Tuesday, January 23 and returned in the afternoon on Monday, January 29. We had three full days in Albania, which I’m posting about separately, and then we did the whole journey again in reverse.

See below for more on the journey from Hangzhou (to Shanghai to Frankfurt) to Tirana, Albania.

Continue reading A Trip from Hangzhou, China to Tirana, Albania

Places visited in 2023

In 2023, the memory of strict Covid travel restrictions was still fresh, especially at the beginning of the year. But as time passed, people in China (myself among them) were more encouraged (and more inclined) to go out and move around (and spend money).

Siqi and I went on two big trips in 2023: one to his hometown, and another one to my hometown, where we got married! 🙂

See below for an illustrated overview of where I went in Hangzhou, other parts of China, and the US.

Continue reading Places visited in 2023

The Road to Suzhou

Every place is a place, and connecting places, there are roads. Along the roads, there are trees, plants, buildings, bridges, lights, power lines, signs, and maybe animals. There are millions of combinations of things you can see out the window of a car. And if you’re not driving, you can take photos. Which is what I did on the road to Suzhou.

Continue reading The Road to Suzhou

Suzhou

My boyfriend Siqi drove us to Suzhou for a short vacation when we had a long weekend for the Dragon Boat Festival national holiday here in China. Suzhou is famous for “Venice-like” water towns, ancient residential complexes with exquisitely landscaped courtyard gardens, and the city museum adjacent to the city’s most famous garden.

We didn’t plan very far in advance—in fact, we didn’t plan much at all—but we still enjoyed our time. The main tourist sites were completely booked and/or full of people, but we were lucky with the weather, and were able to amuse ourselves just fine by walking around in the historic district. Now that we’re more familiar with Suzhou’s geography, we know where to go when we go back, which is easy to do since Suzhou is just next door to Hangzhou.

I took photos mainly of:

Continue reading Suzhou

2017 embroidered patches

I buy embroidered patches for places I visit. Here are the patches I bought this year (starting top left, going clockwise):

Bills and coins from New Zealand

I collected the current coins, the current bills, a slightly older set of bills, a couple of older coins, a special $10 note, and a squashed penny from The Interislander ferry.

Below is a chart showing when changes were made to New Zealand’s bills and coins. (The change from a yellow line to a green one indicates the switch to decimal currency.)

It seems like every government bank, bureau of printing and engraving, or monetary authority likes to taunt visitors with displays of cancelled bills no longer able to be used as money. Here’s the display at the Reserve Bank of New Zealand: