Doing some last minute shopping before leaving on vacation.

Sunday, May 11, 2:40am. Leaving soon. We'll be up for about 27 hours before we can check-in. I could never sleep on an airplane so that's out of the question.

We're back from vacation but never made it to Europe. The airline said my wife didn't need a visa on her Chinese passport but then changed their mind at the connecting airport in New York. They said we could stay in New York until we got her visa stamp and then leave. I said I want a refund of my tickets and got it. At least the airline was reasonable about this. No way we were going through all that trouble just to see Europe.

We spent a few days in New York (midtown Manhattan) which is way overrated. It's dirty, crowded, rundown, decaying, noisy, and expensive. What's there to recommend? Nothing. The only thing I regret about our stay in Manhattan was prepaying for three days at the hotel. One day was enough to figure out New York is way overrated and not worth staying. So we rented a car for a one-way trip back to California. We'd had enough of airlines and airports and airplanes for a while. Too bad you can't drive to Europe and Asia...

The Great Smoky Mountains was a far better place to vacation although the western border led out to a way over commercialized "fun zone". After all the natural beauty of the Smoky Mountains you're greeted with miles of a commercialized strip that tries to put sleazy Las Vegas to shame. It comes close too.

The rest of America that hadn't been junked up by the European invaders over the past several hundred years was beautiful.

Maybe some photos later.

The vacation from this fluffed up forum was refreshing too. Why bother coming back to deal with all the indoctrinated western propagandists who denigrate something they can't understand. At least the Chinese get a good laugh from reading all the immature and self absorbed crap these arrogant westerners write.