Guangzhou

Today our pilgrim journey began. We arrived in St Jean Pied de Port via train from Paris yesterday afternoon and began walking this morning. Already it feels like a long time and so very far from home and we have had just 4 days and three countries. We spent a long day in the steaming humidity of Guangzhou China. We arrived at 5:30am in one of the biggest airports in the world. things felt exotic, hard and foreign. We were given a complementary airport hotel for our 19 hour layover but my careful planning of WeChat pay didn't work. Eventually I managed to get Alipay to work. For a bit we thought we were going to be stuck in the hotel all day. After leaving the hotel I saw not one other foreign person all day. We took the metro to town which required several changes of line which I felt proud I managed pretty well. It felt surreal to be somewhere so foreign. We wandered around and saw amazing things and ate traditional Cantonese food at a gorgeous tiny basic place served by an old couple where we pointed at what we wanted & enjoyed the very solid old wooden stools and table & everything. We got duck and chicken with rice, green veg & soup. That evening we got street food which was more unusual, some good and some a little too novel. There was a skewer of insects on offer to be grilled over hot coals. It was still sweltering into the evening and we were sticky and prickly with heat exhaustion, glad to return to the air conditioning. Our hotel had the hugest 50m pool, bigger than any 50m pool I've ever seen. We had to buy swimming caps to wear. We both fell sleep in the hotel after dinner and it was hard to rouse Ed to get the 10pm shuttle bus for our 12:30am flight. I think we were asleep before take off...Meer informatie