Travel Account #4: Harbin

 I had been thinking about going to Harbin even before I arrived in China, so it's weird that now I've done it and it's over.  It was cool, but...everything seems cooler on TV with Anthony Bourdain as your guide.  It was cold, but not anything I haven't felt during the coldest days of winter in upstate NY.  The town was fun, as there was a lot of Russian architecture and Russian restaurants.  It doesn't exactly feel like being in Moscow, though, you know.  Actually one weird thing about it was we had trouble finding places to eat at all.  The Russian (and any foreign cuisine) places are expensive, so we couldn't do that more than once, and there was a strange lack of the normal hole-in-the-wall cheapie Chinese restaurants.  I guess we ate a lot of bread.  And you'd think a city like that would have an abundance of cafes, so you could go in and drink something hot and warm up for a few minutes.  But this was not the case.  I'm always feeling the lack of cafes in this country.  Before we arrived C had been worrying about the temperature, what with being from the desert and all, but he was a good sport.  Here we go:

 

HAHAHA - C with back of an ice sculpture, chubby Chinese kid, and distressed-looking character

All around the town there were ice sculptures here and there, but the center of the craziness was Zhaolin Park.  We went at night to get the colored lights effect. There was a pretty hefty admission price to get in, whatever, and one building in the park had these sculptures which were entries in the international competition.  I could have looked at these all night but it was cold so we had to keep moving!



 

  

  

Wow! There were a few geometric sculptures, but most of them were like this.

Igloo! We went inside of this, where there were ice benches and you could order overpriced beer in ice mugs.

I have no explanation for what this is supposed to be.

                                         

In one corner of the park there was this random-looking building that people were walking into, so we walked in too, and it turned out to be one of those funhouse things they sometimes have at fairs.  It was so fun.  It took us about 15 minutes to find our way out of this mirror maze!






 The next day we walked around, checked out the history museum inside this cathedral, ate candied fruit on sticks but avoided the ice cream bars that many of locals seemed to be enjoying. That night we went down to the riverbank, because my guidebook said you could walk across the frozen river to Sun Island, where there were more sculptures.  But when we got there, we couldn't figure out how to make it across the river without paying a lot for an entrance ticket.  That seemed fishy.  So we just took a frosty stroll and indulged in some super tacky souvenir shops. 

St. Sophia Russian Cathedral

defrosting at a restaurant