Photos from Guangzhou

What a nice place, this Shamian Island in Guangzhou. It's really a tropical paradise, with English-speaking shop-keepers and tasty food. All the shop's have English names, like "Jennifer's Place" or "Helen's Treasures" or "Ben's Gallery."

I can't go further without mentioning the laundry service. It's awesome! Same-day service, neatly folded and wrapped in plastic bags, all for about $15 for the 5 of us. We're thinking about washing everything on the last day, so we don't have laundry or ironing to do when we get home.

Zoe had a fussy day yesterday, but is happy as a clam (whatever that means) today. Here she is getting bathed in the sink. We wanted to just give her a quick sponge bath, but she plopped herself down and started splashing.



The hotel lobby here is gorgeous, with a big waterfall and pond filled with hundreds of huge goldfish. I will get a better picture and post it, but here are the kids looking into the pond from a bridge



Lisa, Kathy and Zoe went on the excursion to the temple. They say it was nice. Here are some photos they took.









While walking through the park, we saw this school class come out to exercise. THey were very orderly and walked in military formation.



Linda and I pushing the strollers on the way to the babies' official medical exam.



OK, here is a story. Our group arrived at the medical facility on Shamian Island. It was very crowded with locals getting checkups for whatever ailments they had. Rui led us to the back of the facility, into a 10x20 room that was PACKED with about 30 babies, 50 parents and 25 strollers. Lisa and Linda decided it would be wise for Don and I to head back to the hotel. Did we go? Absolutely! The women can fill you in on the details of the medical exam, but as for Don and me, we were happy to leave.



Here is a link to a video of Zoe crawling around with Doug and Sean. It's really cute, but kind of big, so give it a while to download.