The Summer Palace

Our Second day took us into the past, with a visit to these huge Imperial gardens. Think Beauty and Longevity and you will have a good idea of the main themes of this palace. We walked the longest corridor in the world, at 728 m long and inside it on the arches sit 14,000 unique portraits and scenes! Such and artistic feat, truly inspiring. You can feel the stories of each painting as you walk under them, and look out at the lake, and mountainous hills in the background. There are many temples filled with gold Buddas and many Chinese came in the pray and leave offerings at the alters - mostly peaches and money. It was a good lesson for the boys. Speaking of lessons we also went to a class on how to tell if your pearls are good quality. very interesting, and now the boys are all looking for a good buy! Lunch was shared with friends and some local wood snails, that Ethan, Liam and Sky dug up. Liam bartered for a set of 10 chopsticks and did well! We are off to the Great Wall today. Sorry we have no pitures for you - there is a problem with the way the net is set up here - we are working on it.