Their plan when they arrived was to stay in Shanghai for the night after the long flight, then we would go to Shanghai to meet them in the morning and bring them to Changzhou on the train to stay for a few days in our city. They then took the high-speed train for 5 hours to Beijing, spent some time there seeing the sites, then took a sleeper train to Xian, then met up with us in Shanghai for the final three days of their trip!
We started with our city, Tianning Temple which you have heard me talk about before, it is the pagoda in our city, you can climb to the top and see around the city pretty well on a clear day! We then took them to a Chinese restaurant for their first Chinese meal of the trip. Everything we ordered someone enjoyed so it was pretty successful meal at "Grandma's Home". The next day we took them to a nearby city, Wuxi to see the Giant Buddha and grounds around it which had some temples and sites to see. We invited out Chinese teacher to come with, she loves Americans so she was excited to spend a few days with a bunch of Americans, and she was able to translate signs for us, assist in buying tickets, and answer some questions about the places we visited. There are a few photos from their journey to the top of the Buddha while the kids, grandma and I stayed at the bottom letting the older Chinese ladies make faces at them :) (A Grandma is a grandma no matter the culture, they all love babies, especially white ones!) The day was perfect for this trip as the clouds weren't low and their was no rain so it was easy to see the Giant Buddha! We packed subway sandwiches so that we didn't have to hunt for food, it seems too when you go to many tourist places a lot of the Chinese people bring in their own food, many fruits and vegetables for snacking on, so we did the same....That evening we went for a "blind" massage with everyone, it was more of an experience to get to the massage place and back to the hotel than actually getting the massage! We had our driver take us to the place, apparently he went to the wrong location, they told us we had to go to the other location because they didn't have enough people at this location to serve us all, so then we spent 30 minutes trying to flag down taxis at 9pm to get to the next location, we end up at the correct location, and it was right next to where we had eaten dinner that night! ugh! a big circle and lots of walking! Then to find a taxi after the massage was just as bad, we walked and walked until finally we were able to get a taxi to get everyone back to their hotel and me to my apartment :(
Our next day was an adventurous one, we had to drive about 1.5 hours to the end of our city really, to visit the Nanchan Bamboo Ocean as it translates to in English. Friday was the start to a Holiday weekend, May Day was Saturday but many companies gave Friday as the day off for the public holiday, so what was supposed to be a 1.5 hour drive was a 3 hour drive in a 12 passenger van full of Schumers! It did give us a chance to really look around, there were some interesting vehicles if you want to call them that, passing us....and there were some fruit stands and such, we were able to stop and buy delicious fresh strawberries on the side of the road, 1kg for $3.
strawberries for sale |
Tuk Tuk |
crazy motorized contraption |
Once we arrived it was good, a little warm but it was nice. You take a walk through some shops, they were making this shaved ice, but different, they took watermelon in a blender, puree it, then put on a very cold ice stone surface and it turned into a watermelon icee! yum!
We ventured up the mountain, and headed to the little train that takes you up about halfway, then to the cable car which will get you to the top to see the pandas! This was my dad's request in coming to China, to see Pandas! We waited in the sea of people to get to the cable car, luckily i think we waited about 30 minutes, then up we went! When you get off the cable car you are sent through a series of museum rooms along the way in which there is information and many items made from bamboo. Then finally you get to see the pandas and we were lucky they were both awake and active when we made it to the top!
passing the other cable car on the way up! |
The NV Schumers, The UT Schumers, The CA Schumer and The Hudsons! |
Grandpa "papa" and Blake |
After the fun day at the bamboo ocean we headed back to Changzhou for a Italian dinner at our local restaurant with an actual Italian guy cooking!
The next day they were on the train off to Beijing.
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