Beijing --> Shanghai

Feb 17, 2015

Happy Mardi Gras!! No beads or King's Cakes to be seen, but it was another beautiful blue sky day with temps in the 50's and less wind. We started our tour by visiting the Temple of Heaven. During the Winter Solstice emperors would perform rites and sacrifices to Heaven and pray for a good harvest in the upcoming year. China is mainly an agriculture nation and food was always a top concern. Without full bellies, the people would rebel and overthrow the emperor. This large park complex is a site to see the locals of Beijing enjoying the fresh air and exercising. While exercising in the park in the US might look like yoga, or runners training for their next half marathon, the locals of Beijing (mostly elders) were practicing Tai Chi, calligraphy, or dancing. It was really cute to watch the old couples ballroom dancing in the park accompanied by the single grandma's just enjoying the dancing solo.

The gates in the Temple of Heaven were a sapphire blue to symbolize the color of heaven. The other gates we had visited were green to symbolize the emperor's power and greatness. I’m not gonna lie, all the temples and gardens have started to blend together, but it was nice to be back outside in the sunshine walking along the 500year old junipers. You can take the girl out of the US but you can't take away her love of the outdoors :)

Before lunch we visited a local pear shop. 90% of the world's freshwater pearls are from China and we were lucky enough to visit one of the shops. The pearl oysters look very different than our bay oysters-large smooth shells with significantly colored growth rings. Our oyster ambassador, Judy, opened one of the oysters for us to show us the pearls inside and there were more than 10! Varying shapes and sizes, but they were easily picked out of the shell. She didn't go into much detail about how the pearls are created, but it was interesting to see the differences between our oysters and theirs.

After a little shopping, it was time for lunch. We visited a local Beijing restaurant and had northern style traditional food. I won't pretend to be able to tell you what we were eating, but it was a variety of veggies, chicken, beef, and pork dishes and soups. A few a liked, a few I didn't care for, but c'est la vie. Our big lunch made me sleepy and we had a 30min drive on the bus to our next stop, so I definitely took advantage of the break with a quick cat nap.

The Summer Palace was our final site of the day. By now my brain was completely toured out…so many palaces…so many gardens!!! These imperial gardens were the summer vacation spot for the emperor and his family and are over 700acres on a beautiful lake. Me being me, as soon as I saw SAV growing in the lake I was determined to spot some fish haha. I allowed myself to get distracted from Li's tour and historical information about the tour and just enjoyed the hunt/sunshine. She gave us 20min explore, but April and I just sat and chatted with her while soaking up the Vitamin D and the view of the lake. We eventually moved on to walk more through a long corridor lavishly painted with things other than dragons! This was the 1st art work we'd seen that had something other than these mythical creatures and we sipped tea, glanced at a few, and allowed ourselves to relax.

Airport time again!! We suffered through the Spring Festival traffic (aka Chinese New Year)…just imagine trying to get to the airport the day before Christmas Eve and you'll understand…and made it to check-in with plenty of time. Li accompanied us inside to ensure a expedient process and the rest was as expected. A little slow through security, large bathrooms, and a long walk to our gate. April and I had heard that dinner on the plane might be a little iffy (rumors were saying fish heads and rice!), so we decided to grab a bite before out departure. Even though our exhaustion was high, we forced ourselves to catch up on journaling and photo captioning. We could see a few fireworks below in early celebration of the New Year and we were on our way to Shanghai.

1st impressions of the city of Shanghai was more modern. Out new guide's name is Xu Jin and he's a Shanghai native. He told us that about 50% of the residents of the city were internal immigrants and that most of them would be traveling back home for the New Year to see their families. Out new hotel is a Crowne Plaza, with a lovely lobby decorated for the Spring Festival. A large high rise with 24 floors, we have a great view of the skyline from our room on the 10th floor. My back was feeling pretty tight after all these days of traveling and my feet were really swollen so I did some stretching before bed and was very thankful that we had a late start in the morning.-9:30am