We have been home for a week from a fascinating trip to Harbin, China which is north of here across the Yellow Sea and only 200 Kilometers (about a two hour drive) from Russia. The temperatures there are below zero and it has earned its fame from famous ice sculpture, snow sculpture and a white tiger preserve.
Because the temps were so cold our cameras wouldn't work most of the time. My hand wouldn't help much either. A few of the others on the trip promised to send their pictures but we haven't received any yet so I'll include a few that we got and tell about the trip. There is a video clip of this years festival at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=x44Q--Wtads I hope I'll have more pictures to include later.
We arrived on Friday afternoon and most of us were not traveling in our layers of clothes we had come prepared with but our guide wanted to get us to St Sophia's Church before it was dark. We nearly froze our buns off although we had coats, scarves, boots, etc. It is a beautiful old Russian Orthodox building that is now a city museum.
Because the temps were so cold our cameras wouldn't work most of the time. My hand wouldn't help much either. A few of the others on the trip promised to send their pictures but we haven't received any yet so I'll include a few that we got and tell about the trip. There is a video clip of this years festival at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=x44Q--Wtads I hope I'll have more pictures to include later.
We arrived on Friday afternoon and most of us were not traveling in our layers of clothes we had come prepared with but our guide wanted to get us to St Sophia's Church before it was dark. We nearly froze our buns off although we had coats, scarves, boots, etc. It is a beautiful old Russian Orthodox building that is now a city museum.
We then went to dinner, back to our hotel to get warmly dressed then went out the ice sculpture. It is a mammoth area with blocks and blocks of amazing sculpture. There are colored lights in all of it and it is amazing. Hopefully I'll get pictures to remember.
On Friday morning we went first to watch some crazy older people dive into the river where they had just cleared the ice off it minutes before. Of course they were only wearing Speedos.
Next we went to the Sun Island Snow Sculpture Park. There wasn't even time to walk up and down all of the lanes. Most of the snow used is man made because the water content is correct. We saw them working both on the ice and snow sculpture with chainsaws and chisels. They are amazing artists. It reminds you of what it would be to work with marble.
After lunch we went out to the white tiger preserve. It was basically disappointing because they put us in a preserve bus that wasn't warmed up so the windows were so frosted that we had to scrape and then scrape again to see anything. At the very end we walked through a zoo like area that had two "ligers" who are half & half and a few other animals.
That night we went out to a very nice Russian restaurant and had a refreshing change from some average or below Chinese food we were having there.
On Sunday about 12 of us gathered in our hotel room for a testimony meeting for about 30 minutes before we headed for the airport. There were horrible storms all over the country and some people even had to take the train so we were glad that we only had a 4-hour delay.
It was a great trip.
1 comment:
That would be so amazing to see!! I can't imagine how many hours must be spent each year!
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