YunTai Garden

Today was another full day of activity. We started the day by touring YunTai Gardens. They were beautiful and, honestly, I didn’t quite expect the garden to be as beautiful as it turned out. Everything was nicely landscaped and very scenic; it will be hard to pick only a few pictures for the slideshow today. The only bad thing about the garden was that it was pretty humid today…the first really humid day of our entire trip to date. We have been very fortunate to have pretty mild weather with a lot of rain in Beijing and now Guangzhou. After we toured the gardens, Kelly arranged for another optional restaurant outing for lunch, but because it was pretty humid today everyone just wanted to go back to the hotel.

In the afternoon Kelly arranged for several of us to make an outing to the Official Beijing Olympics store in Guangzhou. We have seen many of these stores in China (even in the Forbidden City) but because of baggage restraints on intra-China flights, we haven’t bought anything yet. Today we could safely purchase items that we won’t be able to find back home in the good old USA. There were a lot of things to choose from and we purchased a nice bag, the set of mascots, and a magnet set. It’s pretty cool stuff if I say so myself. The most exciting part of this story, however, is the taxi ride back to the hotel. Kelly informed us that we needed to stand in line at the taxi stand to catch a return taxi. No big deal, right? Well, the line was pretty long, about ½ a city block. So 4 of us crossed the street and took our spot in line. I got honked at because apparently I was moving too slow – traffic was not moving, go figure. We wound up waiting an hour for a taxi…in the rain. In the process we watched many people try to skip in line and get yelled at by all the Chinese waiting in line with us AND the traffic cops would come and chase them off. Also, many taxis would just drive right past the taxi stop…I don’t get it, wouldn’t they want a fare? One older woman even tried to push in front by carrying her daughter’s baby and played the “I’m an old woman with a baby in the rain” card. Fortunately, the young man at the front didn’t buy it because the Americans with babies behind him had been standing in the rain with him for an hour and didn’t try to cut in line once. Ha! We were glad to get back to the hotel, and by the way, I don’t think Kelly thought it would take that long to get a taxi, she looked a bit shocked by how long it took.

We did not take the red couch photos today because Kelly (who is very wise) had guessed we would run out of time with the trip to the Olympics store. So hopefully we will take those tomorrow.

Only 3 more full days in China before we board a plane and head home. Time is starting to fly…we will be home soon with Jenna.