Harbin Ice Festival - Day 1

We are off to the freezing north. We don't quite comprehend how cold, quite yet, as we wait to board the airplane in Shanghai.We arrived to our hotel, The Friendship Palace Hotel, in record time, we think. The taxi driver was driving like mad, passing everyone in the righthand pullout lane of the highway. Quite a thrill. I planned this trip on my own, we didn't have tour guides, etc., and we get to the hotel and they don't have our reservation! and VERY little English. After lots of phone calls to the reservation service I used, and lots of standing around politely, they found two rooms for us at the price I had been quoted. They were right next to each other so we were very happy. Ridley had eventually given the manager his Fudan business card and it seems things got moving a little quicker after that. It really is important to be associated with something here. As it gets dark around 4:15 up here we headed out to the nearby famous pedestrian street to find some dinner. We passed a WalMart super store on the way and loaded up on some snacks, water and tea making implements for the next morning. It was quite an experience. Huge, crowded and steaming hot after the frigid outdoor temperatures. Unlike hotels and buildings in the south, interiors are quite warm here. A respite is definitely needed from the sub-zero chill. Our hotel room was, in fact, too warm. We had to open the window in order to sleep. Our first close up ice sculpture on Zhongyang pedestrian street. There is a lot of Russian history in Harbin. During the White Russian flight many ended up here and it is still quite a Russian influenced town. Russian architecture is pervasive and many things are written in Chinese and Russian. It is also physically very close to Russia. This pedestrian street has gone through the rebeautification process of renovating the old buildings and then housing shops and restaurants in them.
A pipi boy sculpture. The girls have a couple of these little ceramic goodies that are used in making tea. You know your water is the correct temperature if the boy lets loose. Now immortalized (at least for a winter) in ice.
There are ice and snow sculptures everywhere throughout the city. These just happen to be on Zhongyang. An ice maze the girls easily found their way through.
Zhongyang street where we are hoping to find a restaurant REALLY soon. It is becoming toe numbing quickly. The temperature hovering around -10 F.

An ice piano that the girls played. Real off-key sound emiting from this.
Is this Egyptian sculpture trying to make us feel warmer? Not working.
Zhaolin Park, just a block off the pedestrian street, has a huge ice display.
This year the sponsor is Disney. Can you read - Harbin Disney Ice Festival. This is a ferris wheel that we could never bring ourselves to get on. It moved very slowly so we just didn't think we could last. We did not go into the park this first night. After a delicious meal we were ready to warm up a bit and still had quite a walk back to the hotel.
Our hotel had all kinds of banners, red lanterns and huge blow-up rainbows surrounding it. We found out why the next morning when we saw all kinds of government and police officials coming in to what looked like a huge party meeting. No wonder they were surprised to see us there! The hotel was packed with very important officials - and us.