Our guide Eric who is from Harbin picked us up at noon and took us to a big loud smokey restaurant. We were not ushered into the big public room. Eric had arranged for us to have little private room - which was nice - the kids could be noisy, no smoke, and we could have a conversation --we had a huge lunch - Eric ordered all the food - ordered enough for 10 people, we felt horrible that we couldn't eat more - but it was just way too much. He had ordered us a wonderful mushroom soup, a dish of pork something, a plate of spicey shrimp flash fried with something crunchy that we never did figure out, sauted bok choy, the biggest plate of rice I have ever seen. Ben didn't seem to like much of it - Hannah tasted all. We decided the mushroom soup was the best.
After lunch we went to the big tiger park. This Tiger park was opened in Harbin in 1996 and at that time they had about 20 tigers. When we first visited it - with Ben in 2000, there were 65 tigers. This time when we visited there were over 900 tigers! It was pretty amazing. After the Tiger park we went to the Harbin Sun Island Scenic Spot which was a huge park that was over 30 square Kilometers. We walked as much as we could but it was raining while we were there so we took these electric trains around the park. One park had "pet" deer that you could feed - actually you paid to feed them - and to think, we pay nothing to have the deer come munch our flowers daily in Virginia! The kids really enjoyed it. From there we went to the Sun Island Ice and Snow Art Museum. Harbin is famous all over the world for their ice sculptures. If you have been to a Gaylord Resort either in Maryland or in Orlando, every year for the past few years they bring ice sculpturers in to do amazing ice sculptures and they are typically from Harbin. The ice festival in the winter in Harbin is the most busy time of the entire year in this city. They now have a permanent place so when you visit Harbin any time of year, you can see these sculptures. They give you big jackets and boots to put on. Nothing fit anyone. They had a big slide to ride down in a covered tire. The kids voted this their favorite place of the day to visit. From there we went to the Harbin Construction Art Museum, which is the old Russian Orthodox Church - St. Sophia. After that an ice cream break for the kids and we took long walks through some markets and shops. I totally forgot to pack socks for Hannah, so a bit of shopping was necessary. The world cup was on tha huge flat screen TV on a street corner so Ben enjoyed that while we did our sock shopping! Walking down one street they had these food markets where they were grilling all kinds of meats - we were walking and looking - it seems one of the local favorite things to skewer and grill are silk worm pupa - which is the 2nd stage of silk worms - they were squirming in the dish, then they got skewered and grilled. NO, I had no desire to try one at all!! They looked absolutely disgusting!!
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