Guangzhou Day 3-Zoo & Pearl River Cruise

OK So I am a little behind in the blogging! But we don't know what day it is half the time over here so who will ever know! Since coming to Guangzhou we have had a lot less time in our room which has made keeping up a little bit harder. But I will go back a day or two and catch you up!















Our 3rd full day here in Guangzhou started with pictures with our group. Our group consists of 9 families, two of which we started with in Nanchang with from day one with our babies all together. Then we joined 6 other families here in Guangzhou. Here at the White Swan Hotel all the adoptive families have a tradition of getting their children's pictures taken on the "famous red couches." This particular red couch experience was just hilarious, but the children would not agree. Families with older children placed their kids on the red couch first and then we added the babies. Well the first baby sat down and began to scream, then the next and finally I looked over and simply to join the crowd Anna Claire began to cry as well. By the time every parent had taken their pictures, we had an ensemble of crying. It took us all a few minutes to regain control so that we could all take a group shot with all the children and their new families. Take a look at the pictures. We actually dressed Anna Claire up later and took some additional shots where she was not having melt down. I will put those up in a later post.














We did some shopping and had lunch and prepared for our afternoon outings. We met our group at 2pm to go to the Guangzhou Zoo which is the 3rd largest zoo in all of China and by the way Guangzhou had 12 million people that live here and we saw quite a few of them. All of these outings that we have been telling about are paid for already when we wired all of our required money to China a few days before we left. You really don't get a choice as to whether to pay for the outings, but you can choose not to go once you get here. I really liked the fact that things were planned for us to do otherwise we would have been bored at times. I met one family who was with another group and they did not have any outings planned and anything they did was just on their own and they weren't really sure how to go about things on their own. We have considered it a privilege to be able to see the country that Anna Claire was born in and we have lots of things to tell her once she is older. Anyway, our zoo trip started with a tour of the zoo via a golf cart type thing with multiple seats. We got to see what the zoo had to offer and then we could go back and look at the things we liked the best. We really only had about an hour after the tour was over and this was a very large zoo. So we probably only really saw a small portion of it, but what we saw we really enjoyed. On our tour, we stopped and got out to see the Panda Bear and we were told he would be let out of the cage while we were there, but they never came to let him out. It was neat to see the Panda, but our pictures didn't turn out so good due to the cage bars. We then started our walking time and we went back to see the monkeys, tigers, elephants and a few other animals along the way. I'll post pictures so you can see a few of the sights. We found the zoo to be very nice and rather clean just looking around, but they had rats. When I say rats, I mean rats to the tune of around 10 to 12 inches long. We first saw them in the monkey mountain display. They were almost as much to see in the exhibit as the monkeys were. As we wondered about the zoo, I saw a few run through the grassy areas and began to feel icky. Then I was going to double back to take a picture of something that I had missed and one ran out in front of me. I screamed like a girl and decided I could live without that picture! A few families didn't like the zoo due to the rats, but we enjoyed it!









































































































We came back to our room and gathered our stuff for the evening and once again met the group for the Pearl River Cruise. Our room has a view of the Pearl River and all the lights up and down the river are truly a sight to behold when nighttime arrives. Our guides booked us 2nd floor tickets that were inside, but she said anytime we could go on the third level which is outside to see the view and take pictures. We started with dinner which was a buffet. After all was said and done, we all agreed that the food was not why we had a good time. The food was terrible and we all left wishing we could go to McDonald's, but our guide thought we really like it! We later bundled up the babies and headed to the top floor and it was just amazing. The riverside really did look like we were going through Manhattan, but it was lit up like Las Vegas.




The Cruise Boat














It looks like Vegas along the river bank!










All the hotels and buildings are lit with neon lights and some are doing designs and flashing!













A bridge that they light up!













Our Hotel, The White Swan all lit up













This is us on the top level of the boat