We only spent five nights in Guangzhou, and after our 20,000 step tour the day before, we took it easy our final days. This day, we started by sleeping in, then heading to downtown Guangzhou, which is full of skyscrapers surrounding Huachang and Flower City Square, and across the river from the impressive Canton Tower. It feels like many modern city downtown’s across the world, with skyscrapers, a body of water (Pearl River), museums, shopping, and lots of people.
Spring was in effect and the flowers were stunning, even on this overcast morning.
Our first stop was the Guangdong Museum, which was an anthropology museum detailing the history of the land and it resources back to prehistoric times. We registered via an app to get our tickets, which took some time, then entered the museum. Since it was during Chinese New Year, and a Sunday, there were a lot of people inside, and we had to move through the museum rather quickly.
Open since 1959, a museum docent was giving an introduction to the museum in English to another group and invited us to listen in, which was quite informative. The highlights for us were the many, many minerals from around the area, from ivory to jade to quartz and many others, that had been carved into figurines of stunning beauty:
Some scroll paintings:
Black Lacquer glazing done primarily in the 19th century (that was popular among Europeans of the time as well), including furniture, and even fans(and their cases):
We left the museum and strolled through the park; a young woman and her friend asked us to take their picture, but we think it was a way for them to practice their English, which we were more than happy to oblige. They were so sweet and we took pictures with them as well, using their digital camera (which are making a comeback?), and had lots of smiles and laughs in our limited interaction.
We worked up a hunger, and thought that in the downtown there would be restaurants that served foods other than Chinese, which proved to be a nice change, and we found a Turkish one. The food was excellent, and Jessica thought even better than what we ate in Turkey (very high praise indeed).
As the sun set we wound up back in front of Canton Tower, and decided that we would go up the tower the next evening, our last in Guangzhou, and take in the full effect of the lights at night.
Our last full day we did some shopping at nearby mall after breakfast and lunch. After we packed for our train trip the next day, did some laundry, and then took a Didi to Canton Tower, prepared to go up (and take a ride in the globes – named the Bubble Tram) that circled the top). We were able to bypass the long ticket line as we had to show our passports in order to buy tickets, but all the globe tickets were sold out. We bought tickets for the 480 Meter (1,575 feet) observation deck. We joined the elevator line, which took us to the first (shopping) deck, then another line and elevator to the observation deck, which was packed with people.
We found a spot to stand in place, and waited for nightfall, which was rapidly approaching and see the city all lit up. We chatted with a fellow American from Las Vegas, who was visiting for the day; and he was kind enough to take our picture as we viewed the city from way up high:
After that we headed down, to an hour long wait in line just to go down to the first deck, then another long wait, to finally get to the bottom and outside. But the view from the ground, looking up at the tower, was so memorable.
By the time we made it out, we were really hungry, and went to the closest night market to our hotel to eat, the Shangxiajiu Commercial Pedestrian Street Night Market (that’s a mouthful). It was all lit up and we tried all kinds of food, from meat and potato skewers to dough balls to what is now our favorite night market snack, a minced meat with chopped onions and green peppers, sandwich (the bread is like a croissant, in Jessica’s hands below). We even bought some treats with us for the train ride the next day.
We walked home under the moonlight, got a bit lost, had a too long conversation with the local crazy guy (who spoke enough English to make us keep talking to him as we slowly and carefully inched away) and went to bed.
The next morning we woke up early and headed to the Guangzhou Train Station, ready for our next stop, the coastal city of Zhanjiang!
Phil's WayPastCool 