Beijing Summer Palace

We started our morning before 4 am, when the kids woke up. Our bodies are so mixed up with the time change. China is 12 hours ahead of our time at home (EST). We had to wait for the hotel restaurant to open at 6:30 am for breakfast. Breakfast was a full spread of fruit melons, Chinese breads, boiled eggs, vegetable dishes, 'mei zhou' (Chinese breakfast soup), and juices. Breakfast is included with the hotel room, so we're looking forward to having a delicious meal every morning.

Today, we went to the 'Yi He Yuan' (which means Garden of Restful Peace). This garden park, known as the Beijing Summer Palace, is over 700 acres with the majority of it being Kunming Lake. There are thousands of structures, such as pavilions, towers, bridges, and corridors throughout the park. It truly was beautiful looking over the lake. There were dragon boats, sailboats, pedal boats, the famous marble boat and long bridge. The lake is surrounded with weeping willow trees that sway back and forth in the breeze. The pavilions and towers around the lake make it a picturesque place.

We tried to go down the famous Long Corridor, but there were so many people that we opted to just sit and rest off to one of the sides. The corridor is painted with beautiful historic scenes all along the corridor's ceiling. Hopefully I'll get around to posting some of our pictures soon.

For dinner, we went to a 'Qing Zhen Cai Guan' (a Chinese Islamic restaurant, which literally translated means 'pure truth food restaurant'). We walked for about 15 minutes from our hotel to the Xuan Wu District, a section of Beijing where there is a large Muslim community. It was very interesting to see the blend of Chinese and Islam cultures. I so wanted to take pictures of the people and buildings, but was carrying a sleeping Brian. In fact, all three boys had to be carried during the walk - they were so tired, and they slept through the whole meal. The food was full of different spices - some that I recognized were anise, fennel, red pepper flakes, coarse sea salt, cumin, cilantro, and garlic. Each bite was packed full of flavor. The restaurant we ate at was run by people from the Hui ethnic minority group. I definitely want to visit this district and eat their food again before we leave.

The boys: In the morning, while we were waiting for the hotel restaurant to open, we had the boys take a bath. The bathtub upstairs is made of wood and is much taller than a typical-sized porcelain one. I believe that these tubs have been popular in Europe for years. They had a lot of fun and are looking forward to taking many more baths during our stay. For breakfast, they each ate a plateful of watermelon. Justin, who usually doesn't eat much, ate 7 eggs. He ate just the whites, but kept going back for more. At the Summer Palace giftshop, Kevin got a Chinese fan with pictures of Chinese opera masks. He is enjoying his stay so much that he told us, "I don't want to leave China."