This was our last day in Guangzhou.
We had to stick around until 4 to wait for little girl's visa.
We decided to finally take a trip to a park that was "across the street" from our hotel.
The streets here are very busy and don’t have crosswalks or hordes of other pedestrians like in Beijing, so the citizens use the metro stations to go under the traffic rather than try to cross it.
To get to Yuexiu Park, we had to cross under two roads via metro stations (imagine underground walking tunnels), but we eventually found it! The park was huge. I'm guessing we didn't even see half of it. We expected what most of you are picturing when you hear the word park: large grassy areas, trees, lots of playground equipment...
This was not like that. Yuexiu Park was an extremely, well-manicured nature exhibit, with soothing music playing throughout, stone and tile sidewalks, man-made waterfalls, and lakes filled with paddle boats. {We should have visited earlier in the week, and then we could have possibly taken a paddle boat in the evening.}
Supposedly, there is a playground of sorts for children, and a statue of Five Rams, which is considered the symbol for the city. We did not see those. The bigs were tired of walking around, and ready to take a break.
There were several groups of people exercising (doing Tai Chi) in the park.
Here are a few pictures that I took.
Workers redoing a small area of the park....
Stairs leading to other sections of the park.
A metal sculpture on the other side of the lake.
Koi fish in a fountain.
After getting our required visa, we were able to leave to back home. We were all ready. We had been ready for several days. I was missing the little boys something fierce. I was ready to be in our home with our bed, belongings, and family.
We had scheduled a train from Guangzhou to Hong Kong that evening. The Palumbo's amazingly had the same train schedule, and first leg of our flight from Hong Kong to Newark.
We had to take a van ride from Guangzhou to the train station. We chose to travel from Hong Kong instead of Guangzhou, back to the states because it was $1500+ cheaper for us. Let me tell you~it was a bear though. Our van ride from Guangzhou to the train station was about 30 minutes long. We then had to haul our luggage up through 2 escalators, a customs check, and load them on the train. Because we are cheap and didn't want to pay $20 a suitcase to check them on the train.
The train ride was about 2 1/2 hours. It wasn't a bullet train. It was a regular, slow passenger train. When booking our itinerary, Joe and I wanted to ride the train because we would be able to see some of the countryside. What we failed to notice was that we would be traveling when it was dark out. We made it though. Found our guide, and took another van ride to the airport hotel.
Hong Kong was established as a colony of the British Empire in the 1800s. The British culture is still carried out in Hong Kong today. Vehicles were driven in the left lanes, drivers sat in the right seat, and English was a main language (several had British accents). Next time, we'll stay longer in Hong Kong and do some sightseeing.
~Tonya
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