The Summer Palace, and the cell phone mystery solved (?)…NOT
Oct 7th, 2007 by scott
Cell Phone problem explained…(I hope)…First of all, I finally got an email from the Pandaphone/Pandasim company that mentioned the dates of the service (which I specified) of October 8 - November 11. Well, because of hundreds of dollars of savings, I changed the plane flight to here to October 3 and didn’t think to change that with Pandasim. So, they were waiting until tomorrow to turn it on. I wish they would have noticed that from the first few frantic emails of “please turn the service on”, but I think it should work tomorrow…
Update…well, it’s 7:30 in the morning on Oct 8 and my cell phone is still giving me the “Sorry, your phone needs to be charged” (with money) message. So, I wrote them another email. This is really frustrating! sk
The Summer Palace
All the pictures I have seen of the Summer Palace have been of the buildings and the marble boat. In reality, it is a huge park around a lake that has a big hill in one area. While it has a lot of cool old architecture, it is really nice to walk around the lake, which I estimate is about 5 miles, depending on which paths you take. It was extremely windy (about 35 mph / 55 kph) today. As you can see in a couple of the pictures I took, the lake looked more like an ocean with the chop that the wind created.
While much has been written about this place, here are a few of my observations that I have not seen when studying for the trip. The big round building on the hill is a Buddhist temple. The willow trees are really fantastic. I had heard of “the wind in the willows”. It really looks like an invisible living being is making its way through the trees, since their branches have many leaves and hang very loosely down. It looks much different than the oaks and pines where I come from in Tallahassee, Florida. It was easy to find places to be all alone, and it is a nice place to sit and think.
Well, my legs were definitely sore when I got home, so I took a five hour nap when I got back. That’s why I’m up now. I’ll try to get some sleep…
I bet the sound of the wind through the willows was amazing! It is an incredibly beautiful place. So does the Marble Boat really float, or was it carved and placed there?
That hat your wearing has kind of a “Green” tint to it. Maybe it was just the lighting.(LOL)
Thank you for the reporting and I enjoy reading your journey. Good luck for Mt. Taishan’s trip and waiting to see your report.