Mid Autumn Day at San Juan
Oct 4th
It seems I don't have a jet lag problem, at least for this journey, so I got up early and plan for a day tour around the city.
Oct. 3 is the traditional Mid Autumn Day (中秋节) for Chinese people. Since there is 12-hour timezone difference from Puerto Rico to China, short messages from friends flood in to remind me for a moon-seeing. Quite interesting.
Nevertheless, I chatted with parents and friends in the morning, and then went out at noon. The target today is Old San Juan, the oldest district has a history of 500 years. The friendly hotel assistant (I'd wish to stay at YHA but there are no YHA hostel at San Juan, and I'm not sure if it's safe to find a hostel) informed me I could take B-21 bus to Old San Juan terminal. However I got attracted by the beautiful scenery of Condado beach, so I decide to walk to Old San Juan (~6km to go).
It took me about an hour to reach Old San Juan. Holding a GPS device (installed on my Nokia N79) in hand felt great, I located a McDonald's by it and made straight in. It might be a little bit nonsense to search for a McDonald's after flying around the globe, but the most important thing is get myself fed so I don't care about it.
After having a BigMac at the McDonald's I walk to Fort San Felipe del Morro, or "El Morro" in short. Unfortunately it began to rain, but oddly it was mostly clear, except a small convective cloud overhead. But the cloud kept growing and poured down the rain despite the clear sky and sunshine, quite freaky, so I was held at the stores along the street. My biggest fault should be forgetting to bring an umbrella.
I finally arrived at El Morro, unfortunately when I was on the top of the fort it poured again. But the fort is great, a very fine historic place, although without much introduction around the park, the old fort speak itself. Another famous castle, Fort San Cristobal, is nearby and the ticket is only $5 for both forts, so I decided to walk to San Cristobal's.
There are much more introduction at San Cristobal about the history and construction of the fort. San Cristobal is much smaller than El Morro, but it preserved several original "garitas", i.e. a lookout tower, which is the symbol of Puerto Rico. A small poster presentation informed the visitors about the history of San Juan forts and Puerto Rico. Interestingly, it doesn't contain any information about the American victory against Spain in 1898, which Puerto Rico was transfered after ruled by Spanish for about 400 years. Deep under the fort, there is some ship paintings on the wall, which is remarked as "opus of a to-be-execute Spanish captain". Poor captain, but his doodles kept himself alive after so many years.
It was about sunset after I walked out from Fort San Cristobal. I didn't want to walk for another hour to back to Condado so I decided to take a bus. The public transportation system in San Juan is not quite visitor-friendly, I spent quite some effort at the bus terminal to figure out how it works. The buses are also rare (maybe I got used to frequent bus service in Guangzhou or Beijing...), I did wait for nearly an hour to get on a C-53 to Condado. There are no site-reminding boardcast on the bus, and the driver would not stop without a stop request -- very inconvenient, but I finally figure out the right stop to get off. The moon had rised when I back at Condado, it's now my time to do Mid Autumn Day moon-seeing -- but without mooncakes.
So here ends the day. Tomorrow I'd met Dr. Harris et al at the airport and we are heading to Fajardo -- the meeting place. Real oral-speaking challenge here!
Hello, America
Oct 3rd
I should post this earlier when I got internet connections at Mt. Davis YHA and Hong Kong International Airport, however the battery of my laptop run out and I do not have an adapter for Hong Kong-style outlet, so this post got hold. During this cross-the-globe journey I'll keep you tuned by writing a few lines on the blog when I get able to access the internet (and should be able to do so frequently).
I left Guangzhou on Oct. 1 for Hong Kong, shouldn't comment more on the atmosphere of the National Day, you'll got a lot to read on the news media if you like. It's my second visit to Hong Kong, and everything seems as great as my first visit in 2007, but I still don't get myself able to stay here for more days. I met Mr. Johnson Lau (an amateur astronomer in Hong Kong) and he suggested me to take a look at the firework on that night. The firework was great, too, and I was surprise to see so many Hong Kong residents on the show -- they are still happy for the Day, right?
I stay at Mt. Davis YHA that night, it's a western-style house at the top of Mt. Davis and has a prefect view of Victoria. The room was not luxury but everything was really nice, especially the view. Viewing sunrise there should be great. Its only disadvantage is being considerably far from the airport -- good for a brief car-tour of the city, but not good for the budget (HKD 290 for taxi!).
The check-in precedure went quite smooth, the friendly staff didn't ask twice about my poster bottle. The take-off time was delayed for a couple of minutes due to the ATC control linking with the National Day parade. "Our plane is large and require more space, so we have to wait for another 10 minutes..." the captain humorously remarked. Despite so, it feels great to see the blooming landscape when flying over mainland China and compare the view with Hong Kong. We directly passed Beijing around 13:30(CST) and I got a view of the T3 Terminal and the Forbidden City.
With the in-flight power outlet to keep my laptop operating, the journey was not boring at all. Besides from eating nice meals, playing laptop or sleeping, I was excited about the Arctic sunset and sunrise, and aurora (although not in active period) was also beautiful. Our flight reaches a northern limit of 79.3N -- only 1,100 kilometers from the North Pole! Let's see how much further I can get on the return trip.
Our plane landed in schedule and I got a nice view of NYC and the Atlantic Ocean in background while approaching. This Continental service is the best air service I have ever had, mainly, because the electronic supply and nice dishes.
Then I was going to the connected flight to San Juan. The security check at Newark Airport is the very, very strict, even more strict than that of Olympic-China. My bag was checked twice for a confirmation of my pencil-box. On the other hand, I still have to pay extra attention to the speeding English from the Americans. Unfortunately I'm affected by jet-lag now (12-hour difference from China to America!), so paying more attention for me is more difficult than ever. Hope I can get myself well-warming-up before the DPS meeting.
The New York airspace was extremely busy, our flight delayed for an hour due to ATC control. But when the plane cruising over the Atlantic Ocean, the scenery was great, with the full moon illuminating the convective cloud. By the way, we also flied thru the famous Bermuda region -- nothing happened. When descending I saw big thunderstorm clouds about 250 kilometers away, the powerful lightning was very impressing.
I'll keep this updated -- stay tuned.
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