A glimpse of Tianjin

We took a little trip to Tianjin

for three days this past week.  It was Mid-Autumn Festival week.  A national Holiday.  Our driver picked us up early on Tuesday and drove us there and came back Thursday evening and brought us home.

                                                                                      

  This is our hotel, we stayed on the 37th floor.  It is in the part that sticks up at the top.  We looked down on a lot of  buildings and the cars looked like matchbox cars.  Olivia and Mike are trying to read the map they gave us at the hotel.  It was a large map encompassing a large geographic area but they put so many pictures and ads on it they had to make the actual map almost illegible....to my old eyes it was:(

I am not sure if the building below is abandoned or not...sometimes it is amazing the condition of a building and it is in use.  I just took the shot to illustrate the poor state of building maintenance throughout the cities and probably the country....I have only been to two cities so far.....I cannot say for sure.  The grassy plants on the roof are a common site, even on occupied buildings.  And that little tree on the left that looks like it is poking up behind the ridge line, is actually coming out of the ridge line.  Time to haul the weed whacker topside!!!

 

 Here we are taking a rest after shopping for a while in Ancient Cultural Street, it was opened in 1986 on the site of an old Market Place......It is supposed to look like the original I guess.  The other pictures show the decorative paintings on the pavilion where we sat.  We did a little shopping, practicing our numbers. Yi, er, san.......

 This old gentleman was making lollipops from what looked like caramelized sugar.  He drizzled the sugar from a ladle onto a slab of marble.  This one is an elaborate dragon......he does this freehand.  Sorry the picture wasn't any better but he was mobbed with people watching him so Mike just held the camera over everyone's head.  You can see one on the stick at the right of the picture.

I was always trailing behind the crew so this was my view!!

Waiting for the subway to go somewhere...I don't remember:)

 

  

This is Olivia holding up a pretzel.  We found a German restaurant along the river.   We have found several German restaurants here in Beijing as well.  I think we have had more German food out than any other type.

That was it....a glimpse of Tianjin.  More to follow.

Love, fondly, sincerely,
zaijian,
Ramona