All of the things that we saw in the morning were in the same general park. The first thing we saw was the Sacred Way. This is a 615 meter path that leads to the tomb of the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty. The path has around 20 giant stone statues along it to guard the way. It was built over 600 years ago. Surprisingly, there no restrictions on touching these ancient statues. People climb all over them. The kids had a good time with it.
After the Sacred Way, we visited Dr. Sun Yat Sen's Mausoleum. This is the main leader of the people that overthrew the last Chinese Dynasty in 1911. He died in 1929 and they built the mausoleum for him. There are 392 steps up to it. This was to reprsent the 392 million Chinese at that time. Besides the steps, there were some long uphill paths to get to the mausoleum. We only made it step 93. By that time we were all dripping with sweat. It was pretty hot and very humid. Patrick and I had already been to the top before and the girls were done. We did get a nice picture.
Next we took a short ride on a cute little trolley car that was made up to look like a train. The wind allowed us to cool off a little, but then we had to walk to temple/wax museum. I can't remember the name of the temple. By then, we were so hot and tired, that most of us didn't really care that much. Sad really.
We were able to cool down when we had lunch in a very nice air-conditioned private room of a restaurant. The food was excellent and we didn't have to deal with the smoke from the main area.
Finally we left for Gaoyou. Our tour guide said it would be a 2 1/2 hour drive. It actually took 4 hours. Unlike the trip to Hengyang, it was through city the entire way. We didn't really hit country until we were almost to Gaoyou. The trip was not nearly as interesting. The only real highlight was the ferry ride across the Yangtze River.
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