Day 6: The People's Park

This morning after breakfast we met our guide and went to the People's Park here in Nanning.  There were people out all over the park area doing tai chi, dancing, singing, playing instruments and just gathered in small groups.  Our guide told us that most people live in small apartments in the area so they like to spend as much time outside of their apartment as possible.  The majority of the people we saw were a little older and we were told that many of them were probably retired and come to the park to meet up with friends before picking their grandchildren up for lunch (schools get out around noon here for lunch and a nap and all the kids must leave the school campus and return around 3:00PM to finish their school day).

This park had a small amusement park area with a carousel, ferris wheel, bumper cars and swings like you see at the fair.  We bought a few tickets and rode a couple rides.  Heidi's favorite ride was a little train and Olivia loved this other ride that is similar to the tea cups at Disney World where you spin the wheel to turn your cart.  Olivia kept yelling "let's go faster and make Daddy sick". :) 

After the park we had lunch at a local restauarnt in the mall that attaches to our hotel.  We ordered fried rice, steamed rice (Olivia's request), a dish we thought was spicy chicken but turned out to be some sort of seafood dish instead, teriyaki chicken legs and green beans.  The green beans were interesting--they were served cold and were pretty crunchy.

Later in the day, Brian took both girls to Walmart to look around their seafood section because it is quite different from our seafood section in the US.  Here they have eel sitting on ice, fresh fish swimming around that you bag up yourself, whole freeze dried fish in bags, and all kinds of other creatures.  Olivia took some pictures of their interesting finds which included eel, chicken feet, etc.  She said it was stinky in that section and she held her nose all the way through it.

This is our last night here in Nanning--we fly out tomorrow evening for Guangzhou where we will spend the remainder of our time in China. It will be Heidi's first plane ride and our first venture through an international airport with an extra child, all our luggage and a stroller.  We have some packing to do and I still have a few clothing items drying on our clothesline that will hopefully dry overnight, otherwise I will be drying them with our hairdryer!  We paid for laundry service (not through the hotel because even in China that is really pricey) but it still ran almost $50 so I hand washed a few items.  Most hotels here have retractable clotheslines in the bathrooms and you will see clothes hanging out over apartment balconies all over the city.  Our guide told us it is too expenseive for most families to own a clothes dryer here.