Travels around the world.

In September we made a trip to Eastern Europe.  Our first stop was Szklarka National Park in the southern Polish mountains near the border between Poland and the Czech republic.  I went for a couple hikes there. Those pictures can be found on this web page. From there we got a ride into Prague and spent two days there.  Prague pictures And then we flew 8 more hours to Almaty, Kazakhstan, where we spent one day and then flew up to Ust Kamenogorsk, where we spent 3 more days. In Kazakhstan I saw lots of beautiful textiles, embroidered wall hangings and cushions,  felted carpets, woven braids and more.  I saw two yurts in museums that were filled with beautifully decorated objects.  You can find some of those pictures here . This amazingly decorated, wooden cathedral is in Almaty.

I did get my Taiwan photos organized finally.  It was fun having my son show me around Taiwan.  We went into Taipei on the high speed rail, which took 32 minutes and left exactly on time every time. We visited two national parks, several temples, lots of restaurants, which I mentioned in the previous post, one family home museum, a seaside historic town, and much more.  There are 3 pages of photos, which link to each other, but I'll give all 3 links here:   Taipei Around Taipei Taroko Gorge   I'm going to be lazy and not add any photos to this post.  Go visit those pages for the photos. I'm leaving in 2 weeks for Poland, Prague and Kazakhstan-yikes!

My son, Patrick is in Taiwan for nine weeks. So, of course I went to visit him there. This was my chance to sample Asian food, and I took a lot of pictures of our meals and other food and restaurants, so here goes: We tried lots of things from street food to elegant restaurants. This is our first course at a fancy Chinese Restaurant in Hsinchu. (for those of you who read Pinyin: Xinzhu) This place was quite elegant, but we were there after dark and the pictures I tried to take just don't show it very well. Patrick getting started on the first course. On our last day together we went to Danshui, a resort town on the coast. Here we tried some street food starting with these fried pork rolls on a stick. See the picture at the top of the stand. That evening we ate at a dumpling restaurant. The dishes here came one at a time, so this is the first two. These dumplings were a bit tricky to eat, but delicious. This was our first lunch in Taipei. Patrick ordered some fried...

This post is way overdue, but last year got busy.   So here are links to the pages I did last year with pictures of our trip to Ghana in October, 2009 And some pages for Ankara, Turkey . From this page you can link to the photos of Beypazari , a lovely town in the hills west of Ankara. Happy New Year!!!   and Happy and safe Traveling in 2010!!