china: the wrap-up

English Hubby and Sweetpea enjoy the Yu Yuan Gardens in Shanghai.

Alright. It's been two weeks since my return from China and my intention (remember that word?) to write four or five separate posts showcasing some of the images and impressions of our experiences is pretty much in the toilet. A travelogue this blog is not.

So in the interests of closure, I invite you to have a look at some of my favourite photos from the trip.

Oh, you'd like to see them a bit bigger? So demanding.
Click HERE to see a slideshow on Flickr.

And if you'd like even more detail, then click on my China Collection and you can follow along with us to each city we visited -

Hong Kong (some of my favourite street photos, and the Lantau Island buddha and cable car ride).
Guilin (our boat trip on the Li River, with the classic rounded peaks you've seen on postcards and Chinese watercolours)
Yangshuo (our afternoon stop at the end of the Li River trip)
Chengdu (the visit to the panda reserve, and the gargantuan Leshan Buddha where the drama of Sweetpea losing her tooth pretty much overshadowed the buddha itself)
Hefei/Dingyuan (visits to a primary school and an orphanage in the province where my nieces were born. A definite highlight of the trip.)
Shanghai (a city more western than most western cities. Our hotel there was fabulous, and even though the shopping market there wasn't authentically historic, it was still very scenic and where we got most of our souvenirs)

We'll be returning someday. Sweetpea still wants to see the Great Wall but it required a trip to Beijing which we just couldn't squeeze in. My trip there in 2000 was memorable and if you're seeing China, then the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square and the Wall are must-have experiences. English hubby also was longingly looking west toward Tibet when we were in Chengdu, which was a short flight or a two day trainride away. If you'd like to see Ehub's stunning photos, please check out his Flickr stream as well.

Even with the challenges of the trip (unwanted photos of Sweetpea, smog and breathing difficulties) it was one not to be forgotten, made even more special because of the people we were travelling with, including my family.