Wednesday in China

We are a few days behind in blogging due to some very busy times here! On Wednesday we had just a half day planned with the guide- she took us to West lake, a park close by, and a silk factory.  Since I cannot view my blog, I can't recall if I posted much on the silk factory, but now I've attached photos of the lake and our excursion in a boat.  While the day itself with the guide was not long, our days are very long and very busy.  Violet is not fond of being contained, and she wants to walk.  This may be fine in a quiet park, but the whole part of West lake that our guide took us to was crowded with massive groups of tourists, traveling in big tour groups.  It was difficult enough to have Maddie walk, let alone Violet.  Add to that the very different standards of safety in the US vs China and you definitely do not want to let a little one down to walk becuase there are sudden dropoffs, bridges without sides, edges that drop suddenly into the lake... etc.  Not a safe combo with a "girl gone wild" as Violet tends to do!  Oh and did I mention the massive tour groups? One of the great things about China's growing middle class is that they finally have funds to explore their own country and be tourists around their country.  However, the idea of a perfect Chinese holiday touring includes being surrounded by 50 perfect strangers in matching hats following a guy with a flag and microphone.  Now imagine walking through a serene LOOKING park in a very beautiful area and hitting one of these tour groups every 20 steps.  Yep, there were really that many at nearly any given spot that we were at.  So, when you add into the mix a little toddler who has spent all but the last 3 days of her life confined to a few rooms, with the exception of occasionally going home with ayi's for holidays, it's pretty overwhelming.  So the afternoon, post napping, has been spent trying to play calmly in the room.  Of course our hotel is a good 15 minute walk through heavy traffic from the main section of restaurants, so it means that she gets wound up again just in time for us to arrive for dinner....which makes for an interesting dinner!  We have definitely had our share of flinging food, flinging objects, putting too much food in her mouth and spitting it out at any given moment when she saw something more interesting, etc.  We are looking forward to visiting Hangzhou as a family in another 3-4 years, so we can more readily SEE the sights!