Richard Gasquet & Holiday Destination ♪♪

Our destination for next holiday is:

We have been to France many times before. This time we are going there by car for a change!



Coincidentally my favourite Richard Gasquet might be playing in Davis Cup in Rouen this coming weekend. Rouen is one of the main cities in Normandy France. It is a shame that I am not visiting there this weekend.



Richard, congratulations in Doha!!! (Belated though...)



I really wanted him to win 'one more time' in Australian Open. At this moment it seems there is a wall between Grand Slam Best '16' & '8' for him. I feel that the wall is getting lower & lower so hoping he will get over it very soon.



Richard, I am always supporting you!!!    \(^o^)/

Shanghai (^o^)

Some photos of Shanghai.

♪♪ Jazz Night at 'La Luna di Luca' ♪♪

We went to 'La Luna di Luca' for Jazz Night. 'La Luna di Luca' is a small Italian cafe/restaurant.

We really enjoyed food, wine & Jazz!!! Martina is always trying hard to make everyone happy. Thank you for everything, Martina!

Airport Lounge in Tokyo & Heathrow T5 ♪♪

We could use the first class lounge because of my husbands status of BA Executive Club.

BA First Class Lounge

JAL First Class Lounge in Tokyo Narita

Before we flew to Shanghai we used the 'Business' Class Lounge in Tokyo Haneda airport. The lounge was packed with so many Japanese men! The majority of the people there were travelling for business. It seemed more than 95% of the people were men! It did not feel balanced. At the other airports we always see 'at least' 30-40% of the ladies! Where were the Japanese ladies??? This might be reflecting the Japanese companies? Very few ladies are travelling for business??



Some time ago, when I used the lounge of Eurostar at St Pancras I also saw very few ladies there. The difference was that the Eurostar lounge was not packed with so many men!

Tokyo (^o^)

Some photos of Tokyo.

 



Imperial Hotel Tokyo (Teikoku Hotel Tokyo)

When we visited Tokyo last time we stayed at The Peninsula Tokyo. This time we stayed at Imperial Hotel Tokyo for change. They are neighbours.

A Huge Christmas Tree

Main Entrance

 

Rose in a lift

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Card with a present from the hotel

 

 

This hotel is convenient for shopping in Ginza. You will find many designers brand shops, cafes & restaurants there.


Wrong area for the people who are expecting to see young girls in interesting costumes though!

Radiation in Japan ！！！

We have to remember that Japan still has severe radiation problems.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUiMxA4WfCQ



Even you avoid Fukushima & surrounding area, your food & drink might be contaminated due to the good distribution systems in Japan...


In Tokyo, there are some 'Becquerel-Free' restaurants.


They choose all the ingredients carefully and check the values of cesium using the machine.


I recommend the people to go to the 'high-awareness' restaurants in Tokyo. Might be difficult to avoid this 'problem' 100%, but, at least, we should try to reduce the level of the 'problem'.


http://fbsnetwork.com/


http://www.crayonhouse.co.jp/shop/pages/restaurant.aspx

For the above links please use 'google translate'.

Interesting thing is that in Tokyo they stopped checking the radiation level of the importing items from the other countries especially from Europe because, after Fukushima, Japanese domestic regulated value became higher than the level they used to ban!


We really feel sad that we cannot enjoy our favourite Japanese foods without knowing about all the ingredients came from...


Nostalgic for good old days of Japan...   (~.~)

Hakone Japan ♪♪

We visited Hakone Japan to enjoy hot springs. (thermal water baths)


They have a kind of hot spring amusement park called Yunessun. We took our swim suits for that!


http://www.yunessun.com/english/


They have many different types of hot spring baths such as curry bath, apple bath, coffee bath, wine bath, Japanese sake bath... etc etc


Good place for family, friends & couples. We enjoyed it!




Hakone is one of the closest hot springs from Tokyo.

Mt Fuji from the window

Japanese breakfast

If you do not try hot springs during your stay in Japan, you are missing the half of joy of your holiday!

Antique Market in Shanghai ££

We met our old friends in Shanghai! They are now in Shanghai for the current assignment.


They showed us around and I asked them to take us to the Antique Market.


In the market I got these as souvenirs.

 Pen stand

On the back side of the pen stand

Terracotta 

The top one is a pen stand. The second one is a terracotta item. I wanted to get the information of these but unfortunately the old man of the stall did not speak any English... Especially for the second one I wanted to know more. Is it Chinese god or something???



By the way, you have to be careful with the shoe cleaners in the market. They kept asking us 'Polish, Polish?' We kept answering 'No, thanks.'


When my husband was looking at something at a stall, one shoe cleaner put his 'cheap-looking' shoe cream on my husband's shoe without saying anything!!!


'Oh, No~'


My voice became loud to say 'You cannot do it without any agreement!!! Please wipe it off!!!'


Anyway I am pleased with what I got in the market. My new collections!!!

The Puli Hotel & Spa in Shanghai China ♪♪

To celebrate our anniversary we stayed at The Puli Hotel and Spa in Shanghai.


It was the first time to visit the mainland China!

Nice presents from the hotel

 A bottle of champagne & beautiful flowers

 Bath with beautiful night view

 Entrance hall in our room

Day-bed in our room

This hotel is located at the very convenient place. It is almost on the Jing An tube station.


Taxi was very reasonable so we always used taxi there. Many taxi's are around, but sometimes very difficult to catch one because many people are trying to catch a taxi on the road at the same time...  It reminded us a huge population in China! It was a competition to get the front position among the people! At the end we got used to this competition!


After this hustle bustle fighting?! we always had a nice drink at 'Long Bar' in our hotel.

Shanghai might be the best place for the first visit to China. It is lively and more open-minded than other places.

This hotel is good to be the base to explore this big city!