Hannah and I recently spent some time back in the UK, taking the much needed chance to see friends and family and generally remind ourselves what our home country is like. By the time we’d got back to China, we were raring to get back into the culture and life that we’ve made for ourselves here and decided that the best way to do this was to go on yet another mini break somewhere. China is a big country (the fourth largest in the world, behind Russia, Canada and the United States) so there was quite a bit of choice. We decided that we’d like to see some traditional Chinese scenery, the kind which traditional Chinese artists regularly depict in their paintings. Whilst this did narrow it down somewhat, it still left quite a wide area of choice. A quick jaunt on the Internet and we’d made our minds up; we were going to go to the Hunan Province and visit the remarkable quartz and sandstone peaks in the Zhangjiajie National Park. We found a web site that specialised in tours there and booked our trip ...   more »