Despite the weirdness of our hotel (they are experiencing growing pains of renovations to match the upscale mall next door as the area is seeking to become a tourist destination) we are right in the middle of a beautiful area of Jinan. We are inside the old city, which is surrounded by the city river. The walk along the river is lovely as you saw in the post from yesterday, and there are also several parks connected by the river. We saw two of them today. This morning we visited Baotu Spring Park with Missy. Jinan is a city with more than 700 natural springs and Baotu Spring is the biggest with water bubbling up from the ground into a pool that is over two meters deep.
Later in the day, after lunch with Missy at our favorite wonton restaurant, we ventured out by ourselves because it was a beautiful day. The wind had blown the smog away for the most part and it was 80 degrees or so. There is a beautiful lake about a 15 minute walk north called Daming Lake. The grounds are beautiful as you can see, with many traditional buildings and bridges. We feel so fortunate to be here this time of year because the weather is lovely and there are so many trees in bloom. It is truly gorgeous.
June Ya-ya seemed a lot more peaceful today. She gave me many kisses riding in the ergo today, and seemed calm and content. She did no crying or crazy laughing - she had been doing a lot of nervous laughing. You can see that she was happy to be walking and holding Baba's hand for a bit today. She remembered to call me Mama quite a bit more than the past few days, too. It's all hard to figure out, I'm sure. But we were encouraged when a grandmotherly woman asked her (in a friendly way) who we were and she identified us as Baba and Mama. We get lots of stares and we just ignore them. But, I was glad we had the opportunity to interact with this grandma because she was very affirming.
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