Sunday, June 15, 2008

Summer Palace

From the zoo June and I took an hour long boat ride along a canal to the summer palace. Luckily the man behind us spoke English and told us we had to change boats. The canal was full of all sorts of cool bridges. It was raining though. The entire time there was a lady on the boat giving us a very loud tour in Chinese about what we were seeing.

The boat took us to the summer palace which was incredible. We only made it through part of the grounds. It has lakes, pagodas, temples, bridges, and ferry rides. It was so beautiful. There is apparently an old part which we didn't even make it to.
Even though it was a rainy day, June and I ate some yummy ice cream. I couldn't convince her to get the corn flavored ice cream though. I wonder if it looks like a corn on the cob? They also sell corn flavored yogurt at the shops here and corn juice.

I would like to go back to the summer palace on a sunny day. It felt like you weren't in a city. It was built as the summer retreat for the emperor. After we got tired of walking, we took a taxi to a place mentioned in my tour book as good for dumplings. We ordered vegetarian dumplings and they were yummy.
Our dinner of dumplings and 3 cans of coke/sprite costs $5 and we still brought half the dumplings home! The area where the dumplings were was cool so we walked around a bit. June liked the "cutesy" stores full of hello kitty flip flops with blow up hello kitty faces stuck to them and things like that. It was fun to look in the different shops.

QCLOPS is set to be delivered tomorrow morning at IAP so expect more science-y blogs soon!

-anna


No comments: