Harbin and the Ice and Snow Festival

Today was the big day - - the reason we came to Harbin:   the Ice and Snow Festival!

By Deacon...

We got up, had breakfast, put on all of our layers of clothes even our new ninja hats.  Dad even had one since he got up early and walked back to the store to get one. (Editor's Note:  at -20 degrees, vanity goes out the window.  Ninja hats for all!)

We took a taxi over the river to Sun Island where the festival was.  We got our tickets and went through the gates into a magical ice land.

Everywhere we looked, there were big buildings made of ice.  It was super cold, but we didn't care.  We started walking around and found that some of the buildings had ice slides.  It is a slide made of ice and you go down on your sled and sometimes they don't let sleds on the slide and we have to go on our bums.  The slides are fast.  And we went over and over again - there were only a couple people in line.

It was sunny and bright and the ice sparkled.  After walking around a little, we went to lunch.  There were only a few choices.  We went to Pizza Hut.

Baxter had a Hawaiian Pizza, but they don't have plain cheese pizza, so my dad took me to KFC.  I had chicken nuggets.  In KFC's nuggets it is actually 100% chicken.  I just know that.

After lunch we rang the Buddha's Bell.  We rang it with a big log that was wrapped in a red cloth.  It had a deep ring if you hit it hard.

By Baxter...

You are supposed to ring the bell three times in order for it to work.  You are supposed to make a wish or a prayer and then ring it.  The ringing sends up your wish or prayer to Buddha. 

I liked the ice sculpture buildings, and going down the slides.  After lunch we walked over to the big sledding hills and they told us we were too young.  They didn't really tell us because they didn't speak English and we didn't speak Chinese, but they pointed at a sign that said "16" and then pointed at Deacon and me and shook their head 'no'.  So we walked over to the smaller hills that were for our age.

We brought our own sleds and we had lots of fun sliding down the hill by ourselves.  There were a lot of kids at the festival now.  They hadn't been there before.  After a bit, we went inside to warm up.  When we came out, the sun had gone down and all the ice buildings were lit up with colorful lights.  It was kinda cool.  It kind of looked like a big deal.  There were lots of people here now.

We did a little more sledding and then went on a bigger hill with inner tubes.  That was super cold and fun.  We did that a few times and then walked through the Festival to see the lighted buildings and then it was time to go.

We were sad to go especially because we wanted to sled some more, but we had to meet our taxi. (Editor's Note:  We were at the festival for 6 hours. 5.25 hours outside.  Everyone said we were crazy to go for that long - but we had a blast.  A cold blast!)

We went to Portman's for dinner.  It is a cool Russian restaurant.  Harbin is right next to Russia. We got a table right next to the stage and there were people singing and playing instruments on stage.

They were playing Christmas songs and it was way past Christmas.  But we enjoyed it.

It really was worth going to Harbin for the Ice Festival.  Even if it were freezing cold.  I wasn't really cold because I was running up the stairs to go down the slides and up the hill to sled down.