"Technical glitch"

As you may have noticed, the blog has a new look. I wanted to give it a more personal touch, and after playing around, for the first time in my life, with HTML code, I finally got it quite like what I wanted. But, all that tweaking got me into thinking of ways to integrate this blog with my youtube channel and my picassa albums. All was going pretty smooth... until I deleted, accidentally, all the pics I had online for New Year, a Temple Fair, Thailand, Singapore and Japan... !!! So, if you happen to visit during these days, you'll still be able to see the text, but all the pics are GONE. I'm working on getting everything back to how it was, so bear with me! Oh, and on top of that, some weird virus erased all the info I had on Microsoft's Office for Mac. Fortunately, I had that info saved in a different format, but I have to sort it, organise groups, and a lot of things that will take TIME, so just for a while I'll stop informing you of this blog and stuff by e-mail. Once again, bear with me!

Cheers!

Sunday at Ritan Park

The temperature is a delicious 20 degrees C, the sun is shining, the skies are blue... A perfect day for a walk around Ritan Park, or Park of the Altar of the Sun (built in the 15th century for offerings to the sun god).

As all the Chinese, we took our cameras and took photos of the gorgeous flowers in bloom: cherry blossoms, magnolias...

What a shame that this fantastic weather will last only a few weeks before it turns too hot, and before dust-storms start hitting Beijing... Which makes this precious days even more valuable! If you're around, make sure you go out and enjoy, 'cause it won't last! LOL

Spring IS here!

Spring is here! Spring is here! How to know the city you live in has "wintery" winters? when you actually get awfully excited at the sight of the first flowers blooming, of the trees growing green leaves again, at the feeling of a cool breeze hitting your face while you look at a sunny day that actually lasts beyond 6pm!

It's very weird, honest. We had never experienced this "springy" feeling before living in Beijing. But what can you expect when the plat du jour is cold, dark, gray and bare? every jour? Sure, there were some blue skies, SOME. And some snow, TWICE. And I do like cold weather, believe me. But Spring, after you feel like you simply can't bear another overcast, gray, cold day? It's a JOY. And yes, we intend to go flower watching next weekend. Spring does weird things to you, doesn't it!

Shanghai again! (Shanghai and Zhejiang Part VI)

And finally, one last visit to Shanghai. We SO like this city. We had two amazing dinners with good friends (who, like last time, proved to be the most welcoming of hosts), a few drinks from a floor high atop one of Shanghai's many high-rises, and simply another immersion in Shanghai's cosmopolitanism.

The pics here are photos we took on a nice walk from the Russian Consulate to the Jewish Quarter. It's not a nice and recently renovated area like Xintiandi (a part of the French Concession that's packed with high end shops, restaurants and bars), but it has its own charm too, with plenty of discoveries for the curious eye willing to give run-down European buildings smack in the middle of Asia a chance.

And so one trip ends, and we start dreaming of the next!