Guangzhou

I surprised myself and went a little overboard in Guangzhou.  I didn't have any plans and didn't do any research, but I spent 14 hours in the city and went all over the place.  I was a little discouraged at first when I couldn't find any wifi that didn't require a Chinese cell number, but I eventually managed to scrounge up a tourist map and made it work.  I'm going to be laying over in Guangzhou again two more times, but none of those will be for over three hours, so I'm glad I did see as much of the city as I did.  My feet hate me though, and I definitely need to figure out the wifi thing before I go to Beijing at the end of February.  By the way, I still can't pronounce the name of the city.  I swear every time I hear it, it sounds a little bit different, and I'm just so confused.

Major credit for me seeing as much of the city as I did goes to their metro system.  It's cheap, clean, and easy to use.  Their ticket machines are actually the most intuitive machines I've ever used on a mass transit system.  Rush hour is crazy though.  Crazy.  The weather was also great.  Not the prettiest day, since it was overcast and hazy, but the temperature was perfect.

Shows how hazy it was.

I really loved that these were orange.

This building was just cool.

Palm trees weren't everywhere, but I saw a lot of them.

Some of the branches grow down and become roots.  They look so cool.

Bunnies, just walking along the street.

My favorite part of the city that I visited was Yuexiu Park.  I ended up there because I was determined to see goat statue that I'd seen on all the city advertisements (actually the Five Ram Sculpture, but I can't read the writing so I made up my own name and it's stuck in my head), and after a few false starts and wrong directions I eventually found it.  The park is beautiful, and really brought home that Guangzhou is a subtropical city.

This was the view as soon as I walked into the park.

I tried some Chinese fast food. I have no idea what I ordered, but it was edible! I think the white stuff is some kind of ginger yogurt. It's interesting.

My feet were honestly done by about noon - I'd been walking around since 6 am, the first couple hours carrying my backpack too - but I was determined to stay in the city until after nightfall since I was told the city lit up very prettily.  I'm glad I did.  Some of the pictures are from a short cruise up and down the Pearl River and they were taken behind a window so there's some reflections.