A holiday

 We've recently arrived home from China after a wonderful visit see to our daughter. China is so full of amazing sights, sounds and smells it would be difficult in a short blog to write about it. However, here is a glimpse of some of the things we did during our stay. The scene above is the corner of the street where my daughter lives. Expensive shiny new cars run side by side with these 'carriages'.

 There seemed to be a market around every street corner. Markets for everything. There was the vegetable market, the fabric market, the antiques market etc. all teeming with colour and life.

 Some streets were full of people making street food. It all looked delicious. Even the most basic 'kitchen' seemed to be producing mouth watering foods.

 Park life takes on a new meaning in China. Partly because people don't have individual gardens but also because people love to do things communally. The local park was alive until late a night with people singing. dancing doing tai chi selling goods and all sorts of other activities.

 This park had a whole cast of sculptures of opera singers.I like the way this little chap wanted to get in on the action.

 People just seemed to rock up in the park with a ghetto blaster and start dancing or come with a whole ensemble of friends to play and sing.

 We travelled out to the countryside to walk up into the mountains. It was the most beautiful, magical place but the footpath only consisted of a very rough path of boulders.We were quite surprised to find a community living near the beginning of our walk. Latter when we had walked quite some way we were even more surprised to find more homes, though I'm not sure who was more surprised, us or the folk who lived in such a remote place.

 Another trip we did was to Fuping Pottery Village. There were some huge galleries there unlike anything I've seen before. I didn't see any kilns and only one potter making coiled pots.

 Having driven all the way to the south of France earlier in the year to see Jean Nicholas Gerrard's work imagine my surprise to find he'd been to Fuping before me.

Granddaughter Isabella enjoys her very first walk in the gallery.

Here we are being very touristy in yet another park. I could go on but I think you get the picture!