At the start of May my parents came to China for what sounded like an exhausting 10 day tour of some of the main attractions - Shanghai, Xian, Great Wall, Beijing. Arriving at our door they certainly felt that they needed a holiday to get over the vacation and having colds didn't help. Luckily they had a further few days with us to play with Alex (after scrubbing hands - see earlier comment about colds!) and relax. My father seemed rather taken with a book we had got for his visit 'A 1000 years annoying the French'. Much of the time was pottering around showing them the local sights and places we often go to around where we live - April gourmet, the blue frog, Indigo mall and various coffee shops. We had a couple of trips out, one day we tried (and failed!) to find the kite market a little north of Lido but did stop in at the English tea rooms which had some very welcome fish and chips. Dad and I went out to the aviation museum to see a vast collection of planes, mainly versions since the second world war. Many of which bore more than a striking resemblance to Western developed planes which apparently had been explained by the Russians as just what you would expect by giving the same problem to different groups of engineers, they would naturally converge on similar solutions. Similar maybe, but identical seems a stretch!
On the final day we went to a large market which basically claims to sell 'everything'. I don't think they are far wrong! After wondering around the paintings, vases, general jewellery stalls we headed into a shop selling paper supplies for my mother to stock pile good paper for painting. After some time (probably too much for Dad!) we had amassed a reasonable pile of goods and Eleanor set about haggling the man down, casually throwing in a few more items when it became clear he wouldn't let his price go down any more.
The trip was finished off with a trip to the Blue frog, our favourite restaurant/bar in the Indigo mall before the following morning putting my parents in a taxis before heading off to work. We called the following evening to see how the flight was and of course it was boring but the jet lag had kept mum up all night and she had struggled through the day and seemed pretty wired!
On the final day we went to a large market which basically claims to sell 'everything'. I don't think they are far wrong! After wondering around the paintings, vases, general jewellery stalls we headed into a shop selling paper supplies for my mother to stock pile good paper for painting. After some time (probably too much for Dad!) we had amassed a reasonable pile of goods and Eleanor set about haggling the man down, casually throwing in a few more items when it became clear he wouldn't let his price go down any more.
The trip was finished off with a trip to the Blue frog, our favourite restaurant/bar in the Indigo mall before the following morning putting my parents in a taxis before heading off to work. We called the following evening to see how the flight was and of course it was boring but the jet lag had kept mum up all night and she had struggled through the day and seemed pretty wired!
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