Saturday February 21st…
Today there was no sun, it was cloudy, freezing cold, and snowed on and off.
We started off the day by going to the Siberian Tiger Park. Last time I was in Harbin I went to this park. The cool, and very sad thing about this place was that you could buy live animals (For example; Chickens and goats) that would be realeased during your bus ride through the Tiger Park and you would watch the tigers kill these animals. I know it sounds horrible and how could that be fun. It was awesome. Yes it is probably against animal rights, yada yada yada, but how do these animals survive in the wild?!?! In any case we were all really excited to go see the tigers hunt. When we got there they weren’t selling any live animals because of the winter youth game event that was going on in Harbin. They said they didn’t want to offend any foreigners-offend foreigners; it is a tourist trap that is what we wanted to see as foreigners. So it was a big disappointment but it was still really neat to see the tigers. Most of them didn’t seem to be phased by the brutally harsh temperatures.
After seeing the tigers we went over to Sun Island to see the huge snow sculptures. The main walkway was just lined with huge snow sculptures that have been there for over a month already. Some of them must have been +25 feet tall. The detail was incredible. I cannot even give these sculptures justice by describing them. They were absolutely spectacular. A work of art for sure! We wandered around there for a long time. Some of my favorite sculptures were; the train, they had a huge sculpture of a locomotive. It was awesome! Also, I really liked the Beijing Olympic collage sculpture and the log cabin town, with the trees surrounding the cabins and everything. It was so neat to walk around this park and just be surrounded by these sculptures everywhere that you look.
As night started to fall we left Sun Island to go to the official Ice & Snow Park. We were originally told that it was better to see the snow sculptures during the day and the ice at night…so that is what we did and I was not disappointed for a second.
It’s hard to say what was more impressive the huge snow sculptures everywhere or an entire town made of ice. The Ice & Snow Park was incredible. It was lit with neon lights. There were just stacks and stacks of ice blocks on top of each other and shaped to create some amazing architecture. Everything was huge!!
There was a dance party going on about an hour after we got there. Yes a dance party on ice. The guys were really breaking it down! Haha. There were a number of Ice Slides but one in particular really stands out. The people at the top get you situated in a slide; they tuck in your arms and tell you to lie down. This slide gets some speed. It is made of complete ice and is extremely narrow, I hit my elbows a couple of times. As I gained speed going down I began to wonder how I was going to stop, and then before I knew it I was in a pile of snow. They have a pile of snow stacked up as the stopper. So you fly full speed in to this pile of snow. It was so much fun! Everyone ended up completely covered in snow. I was really lucky, I remembered to zip my pockets otherwise my camera would have been dead.
After this we all went into one of their little beverage semi heated areas. But the little bit of heat was better than the harsh outdoor temp. We stayed in there for a while and then I was able to get everyone together for a great group picture! We continued to walk around some more and then we went over to the other side of the park and found some more slides. These were smaller scale and a snow bank was not needed to stop. But they were a lot of fun. Some of the guys probably went down the slides about 20 times.
It was such a great day. Even though it was freezing it was an incredible experience. The structures still amaze me. Pictures don’t do it justice; it is one of those things you just need to see for yourself!
We left the park when they were closing. All of the neon lights started to turn off. A taxi driver wanted to take a picture of our group on his phone…so we took that opportunity to give him my camera as well and get another group shot…unfortunately, if you look at my pictures, the group shot that he took didn’t work so well! Haha so we took another group shot with him in it. Then he drove us back to the hotel.
At the hotel we found out that the ice bar (and most other bars in the city) was closed for the youth games…these youth games ruined things for us. I was very disappointed but I am really lucky to be able to have seen everything that I saw.
So at this point most of us had not eaten a meal yet, and everything in Harbin closes at 9:30. It is so weird! So we knew we were going to have to eat fast food. Our first hope was KFC, but naturally we were about 5 minutes late, they had just closed. So our next bet was McD’s. We found one and it was fantastic!! After McD’s we walked down the road to a bar that was open called USA bar. We just had a couple of beers to warm up and then we walked home around 1:30AM.
The streets were dead. It was a ghost town. The guys started a snowball fight, which was so much fun we were just running in and out of the streets and we didn’t have to worry about being killed because no one was out. It was the best, and the coldest, snowball fight that lasted about a mile.
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