A week in Calgary

 At Heritage Park in the Snow

 Two guys in hats

 Heritage Park, Calgary

 Boy, those horses are big!

Had a great visit to Calgary with a day at Heritage Park, shopping, and spending lots of time with our grandson and his mom and dad.  Weather was cold, and we had some snow too.  Great flights both ways, and no problems with lost luggage.

OFF TO CALGARY IN A COUPLE OF WEEKS

We will be on our way to Calgary to see our grandson and his parents in early December.  Will try to post some photos of our activities there when the time comes.  In the meantime, enjoy the above pictures from fall of 2010!

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Finally, An End to Friday!

The Friday we thought would never end began with trips to the Beijing Zoo for Anneke and Wendy, and shopping at the Pearl Market for the rest of us - except for Ron and Joyce who left for Toronto at the crack of dawn in Beijing.  About 32 hours after we woke on Friday, Oct. 28, we landed in Saint John, where we were greeted by Rodger and John, who was holding a drawing of Swallowtail to welcome us home.  All of us are now getting ready to sink into the first soft beds we've slept in since we arrived in China, and they will be a treat!

Our thanks go to our tour members who were all good sports about the unexpected in China.  We hope they had as good a time as we did.

Martha and Bryant

GUILIN & BACK TO BEIJING 27 Oct. Thurs.

Tasting Rice Wine in Guilin

Elephant Trunk Hill, Guilin

Two cormorants await their fisherman

NYC skyline, Reed Flute Cave, Guilin

This morning we packed up for the next to last time, and headed back to Guilin, where we visited the Rice Wine museum, Elephant Trunk Hill, and the colourful  Reed Flute Caves before having a delicious lunch at a French cafe in the heart of Guilin.  Then it was off to the Guilin airport for our final internal Chinese flight back to Beijing.

YANGSHUO Cont'd 26 Oct.

Water buffalo, Yangshuo countryside

Rice

Countryside buggy and passengers

Typical farmhouse

Grinding soybeans to make tofu

Karsts lit for Yangshuo evening show, water stage in foreground

Yangshuo extravaganza

Six of us decided to take an optional tour out into the countryside to learn how rice is grown, and to see a farmer's home and garden.  The villages were dusty and poor, with houses of  mud brick, and water buffalo assisting with the plowing, fertilizing and tilling of the soil.  We saw sugar cane, sweet potato, peanuts, water chestnuts, persimmons, pomelos, kumquats, as well as rice, corn, and green vegetables growing in the small garden plots.  There are fewer and fewer rice fields around here because development has claimed much of the farmland.  In fact Bryant and I were dumbfounded when we saw what 8 years of development have done to Yangshuo.

After dinner we went to a show that defies description - concieved and directed by the Chinese fellow who was responsible for the 2008 Olympic Opening Ceremonies in Beijing.  The outdoor theatre with 3000 seats was built on the shore of the river in a natural karst amphitheatre.  The water/stage was larger than the audience space, and accommodated many rafts like those that the cormorant fishermen use, as well as powered set pieces such as a crescent moon.  The most magical moment came when the surrounding karsts, hundreds of feet high at the edge of the river, were lit from their bases, and became a natural set for the show.  It was simply amazing, with a cast of hundreds of young people who sang, danced, and paddled.

STICKY RICE - YANGSHUO 26 Oct.

"Keep together like sticky rice", ordered Ocean as we wound our way through the hordes of tourists to board a riverboat for a 5-hour cruise down the Li River to Yangshuo, in 2003 a small backwater hippie community with one short main street lined with cafes and DVD stores.  Development has transformed this village into a full-fledged small city, with many hotels and major thoroughfares lined with vendors selling the ubiquitous Pashmina scarves, "silk" Chinese children's costumes, and tons of other tourist items that we've seen all over the country.  The overabundance of "stuff" has finally lost its allure, and the walkway from the boat to the Yangshuo center was a test of our ability to ignore.

SIGHTS ALONG THE LI RIVER

GUILIN 25 Oct. Tuesday

Tuesday evening 25 Oct


We are tired tonight.  Some of our group went for a vigorous uphill walk this am after breakfast, but the rest of us opted to stay at the hotel and organize our bulging luggage.  Left Lijiang at 11:30 to go to the airport, which went smoothly, but Bryant and I had to organize  picking up baggage in Kunming and checking in again, going thru security again, and finding our gate before flying to Guilin, where we are now.  We did it all....checking in the group, getting boarding passes, arguing with an attendant who wanted to send us to another counter, but B. persisted and refused to do so.  Arrived in Guilin around 7:45, about 25 min. later than scheduled, but our young guide, Ocean, was there to meet us.  We are now "Ocean's  Eleven" as we are a group of 11.  He is so cute......young and good looking, with a good sense of humour and good colloquial expressions.....as in, (once we got our bags loaded onto the bus) "lets haul ass!"  I think we'll enjoy him.

More tomorrow from Yangshuo.