A Lady in London

I haven’t attended many British social season events this summer. With the exception of Royal Ascot, I’ve been out of town for pretty much everything. But the season continues, and on Sunday I managed to get to the Guards Polo Club for the Cartier International Polo.

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After all of my traveling through Mongolia and Beijing, it was time to bring things a bit closer to home. A few days after I returned from China, I took a day trip up north to Newcastle with some friends.

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Beijing’s 798 Art District just might be my new favorite place in the world. Tucked away in the northeastern corner of the city, the 798 zone is a former factory complex that is now packed with contemporary art galleries, chic cafes, boutiques, and exhibition spaces. Interspersed among the converted warehouses and modern buildings are massive sculptures and public art displays, making every street a surprise for the visitor.

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If there is a best time of year to visit Mongolia, it is certainly July. The annual Naadam Festival is the highlight of the Mongolian summer. A trifecta of traditional Mongolian wrestling, archery, and long-distance horse racing, the Naadam Festival showcases some of the country’s most impressive traditions.

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Driving out of Ulaanbaatar, the Mongolian countryside unfolds like a blanket of fields and mountains. The impossibly big sky with its cumulus clouds and cool, fresh air lend the area an unparalleled vastness.

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The first noticeable image on the road from Chinggis Khaan Airport to Ulaanbaatar is the billboards. Large, shiny, and all in English. Far from the land of Genghis Khan, this is the land of minerals and mining. The land of Western investors. But then we drive a bit further and start to notice something else: sheep. And goats. And horses, cows, and yaks. We see large white gers, or nomadic tents, and we feel like we’ve been fooled by these billboards of westernness. Start looking up from the herds and we’ll notice giant green hills, and above them a vast blue sky that climbs to infinity above the horizon. The air is clean. The landscape is bucolic. It might be pastoral paradise.

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After visiting the Forbidden City, my friend and I traveled to one of the other top sightseeing destinations in Beijing: the Great Wall of China.

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After my sunny afternoon layover in Helsinki, I boarded a long-haul flight in anticipation of a second layover, this one in Beijing, China.

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I didn’t think I would travel back to Helsinki so soon. I was there just two summers ago. In fact, I didn’t even plan to go to Helsinki; it was Beijing I was aiming for. Here’s how it happened: I recently realized that I racked up enough miles on my credit card to buy myself a long haul flight, and I ended up with a ticket from London to Beijing with a six hour layover in Helsinki.

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