Beijing Zoo, Bai Hai Park and Summer Palace

This will be the last post about China. We decided that the boys may get a little bored because of all the walking around Beijing looking at historical things we had been doing and so we decided to take them to the zoo and aquarium at least to get wiggles out and since we were in China, why not make sure that we actually see some Panda Bears. The zoo was just alright, and they did have about four Pandas. But the aquarium that they also had there was a hit it was new and updated. They had a dolphin, seal and whale show (not quite Sea World, but not horrible either) pretty interesting to watch the entire show in Chinese. Isaiah loved watching the jelly fish and just sat there in a daze. The next day we took the boys to the Silk Market and then at night we took the boys to a fun little restaurant. It is a six course meal that you don't know what you are going to be served until you get there. We decided that we would be a little adventurous and try it and hope that fish wasn't on the menu. Well, we all did try some fish and usually shrimp is a hit with the boys but when the eyes were still attached and looking at them, they hardly touched them as well. It was fun and a unique experience. This we all did riding the $.32 subways. The next day we decided to take the boys to the Bai Hai Park. Beautiful, but just a really big walking park. Not as fun for the boys. We also took them to a Confucius Temple pretty but not so fun. In the temple the boys got bombarded by quite a lot of teenage children and the boys were loving that. We then took them to a Chinese acrobatic show that the boys just loved. We were very tired that evening and the boys slept well. Our last day in Beijing we took the boys to the Summer Palace. This by far was the boys' favorite day. The palace grounds were beautiful, but they also had some areas where the boys were able to climb rock stairs into caves and different areas of the palace. It was so large and it took us all day to explore. The boys even found some Chinese soldiers who graciously let our boys take pictures with them. There was a bridge at the palace where there were quite a few people were out with some serious kite flying gear. The boys loved watching one gentleman getting his kite started. As we were about to leave we found a cute little man who had a little calligraphy stand and we had him write each of the boys names out. What a fun time we had.