Advertisement
Published: July 29th 2009
The space capsule
Our hotel room had the shower right in the middle of the room next to the bed. We called it the space capsule and we looked for the button that would suck us up into the ceiling and shoot us to the roof...Jinan is not a hot tourist destination in China so people mostly travel through on their way on to bigger, more attractive cities. But it is called the City of Springs and it is the capital Shandong Province. It has a history of some 2000 years is famed for its numerous relics. It is also the home of Lu Cai (Shandong cuisine). We had to pick what we were going to do in one day and we decided to hit the lake right across the street from our hotel. Overall, a great choice!
Daming Lake Park Located in the center of the city and just across a busy street from our hotel is Daming Lake Park. It is regarded as one of the three must-see tourist spots in Jinan, so we played frogger and darted and dodged traffic over to see what all the fuss was about. The
Lake of Great Light is not extremely large, about 200 acres, but it is famous for it's constant water level that is unaffected by rains and drainage. Although today half of the North end was closed off due to some sort of construction, we did get to see many nice
Stone mural...
There was a long story to go with this mural but we couldn't figure it out... lotus ponds, toss tin metal coins at a bronze bell for good luck and to watch the fountain jump, and we rented a small boat and trolled around the lake in the sunshine and chatted about owning our own boat and running fishing charters down in Mexico for our next year of teaching adventures, which was very relaxing.
During our boat excursion we spotted what looked like the first peak of a roller coaster and sure enough, there is a small amusement park right on the grounds of the lake. We paid 25 yuan each (about $3.50) and jumped on our first roller coaster ride together, as well as our first roller coaster in China! It was short, but fast and furious, and the video is pretty entertaining, what with Jenn screaming the whole time...😊 We also strapped in for what seemed like half an hour on the bumper cars and were chuckling the whole time as several Chinese folks gleefully rammed the hell out of us non-stop the entire time - but never once cracking even a smile. Oddly disconcerting since we were laughing and having a blast!
After Jinan we hopped on another fast train and
sat for four hours, enduring the typical sounds (Chinese talk VERY loud to each other especially on their cell phones and train music is also at 10x normal volume), and smells (close your eyes and imagine walking through any small tunnel in NYC's Central Park twenty years ago and you get the idea), of train travel along with mind numbing boredom once our small video player crapped out after two hours of the latest series on DVD from Showtime, Weeds (great show!). This train was also unique because instead of having everyone facing the same direction, the sections were divided into groups of four seats, with two folks seating opposite of each other. Sounds friendly, but it's not - it's uncomfortable for everyone involved because the Chinese don't make eye contact if at all possible and we don't speak more than a dozen or so words of Chinese and they are related to school and food...makes for a loooong four hours of embarrassed glancing and surreptitious staring. But, like always, we lumbered our way happily off the train, out of the station, and at about 11:30pm we were snuggled up nice and cozy here at the Red Coral Hotel in
Asian poses...
Here is #8 of the dozen or so Asian poses Jenny is learning...this one is shoot me I'm so happy! the home of Kung Fu - Zhengzhou, China.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.062s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 13; qc: 30; dbt: 0.0236s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Super Dave
non-member comment
....Of Love, say What!
Awesome video. It lifted my heart to hear you laughing and talking... most times when we skype, you have only been awake for 2 minutes, so it's nice to hear/see you in normal times... Jen, hope you didnt have to change your shorts.... you sounded a "little" nervous there towards the end =)