Monday, November 9, 2009

RED LEAF VALLEY IN JINAN

As winter encroaches on us here in Jinan we have been traveling a bit. It got very cold on the day we returned from a wonderful Trip to Red Leaf Valley. Here let me, Jay, tell you all about it....
We were bussed by Shandong University tour on Saturday, November 7th, to this tourist resort about one hour away by bus.

Upon arrival, it was clear that the red leaves were already gone! However, we enjoyed the day, seeing all of the dead red leaves (there were a few sort of purple/maroon on the ground),
There were also amazing tree houses (what we in our family like to call E-Wok Villages.







The bird sanctuary (gigantic) with it's colorful parrots, swans, ducks and geese and many of these beautiful peacocks. People inside the cage with them, like I was, were feeding them cookies.
After I successfully captured these beautiful peacock photos, very close ups, inside the gigantic outdoor bird cage, I was told that they tend to jump on and physically attack, peck and scratch tourists who get too close and who look them in the eye. I guess I never looked them in the eye, but they were sure looking me up and down as you can see.

Our tour ended with a Chinese food lunch at the local restaurant featuring chicken head/feet soup plus about 12 other similar dishes. Our only cost today was the $3.00 each of lunch.
It was a great day, certainly a fun day, with many new adventures as we met gobs of people there and took photos with them.

They are all so excited to see and meet a foreigner that they jump at the opportunity to take their baby, personal, family or tour group photo with us in it. I guess we just look totally adorable!

This trip also gave us some fancy and expensive English signs to direct tourists in English...However, they needed some proof reading before they went to the final production step -- the printer. Can you find the spelling mistakes?






Here are some brides we caught on camera as they were taking their wedding pictures in the lovely scenery.


Over all it was a wonderful tour of this interesting and beautiful country.

1 comment:

Sarah said...

I can see you building some of those tree houses in Idaho....Such a beautiful place.