Goodbye to China #9

This last Tuesday we had our last China family outing, to the Summer Palace. We had attempted a trip a couple years back, but stupidly as if we've learned NOTHING about travel in China, went on a national holiday. We never made it! But this is one of those places you just must visit if you live here. I imagined K's teacher asking her to share with her class about the Summer Palace, and she'd say-- "I never went there!" So, we clearly had to make it happen!



















Some very fun paintings...









K was very interested in this display of original calligraphy tools-- since she had a Chinese calligraphy class this year as a part of co-op!





















































The marble boat... I remember taking a picture in front of this in 1999.


















































A worthy visit for sure, but whoever said that you can finish this visit in 1 1/2 hours (on the internet) clearly WASN'T touring with small children.















We took the subway intending to have a special dinner at TGI Friday's, and we took the wrong exit, but it spit us out west of the Bird's Nest, the site of most of the 2008 Olympic games, another place we'd never taken the girls to visit. I didn't ask them to turn around a pose-- we were on the edge of breakdown at that point!