Guia Hill & Lou Lim Leoc Garden

There are so many beautiful parks and gardens in Macau.  Most of them combine neatly cared for plants and flowers, Chinese styled gazebos, stone paved walkways, and large water features filled with big, colorful fish and turtles to create a perfect little paradise.  Often times there's too much to see in one visit so going back may reveal a totally new view of the park.  Our visit to Guia Hill was filled with lots of fun things but we definitely have to go back to see everything we missed.  It's a very cool park!   

To begin our trek through Guia Hill, we took a short tram ride to the top of the hill.  There were some beautiful, breathtaking views over the garden.  We ate lunch at the top and then slowly wandered back down through the park.

  Many of the parks have these pathways made of smooth stones laid out in patterns meant to be walked on in bare feet.  I believe there's some kind of healing associated with them but I find them pretty painful to walk on.  The kids, however, love them! We have a park near our apartment that has a similar path and they've been practicing almost daily so they can walk the entire length of the path now.  

This park also includes the Fortaleza da Guia (built sometime between 1622 and 1638) and the Guia Lighthouse (built in 1865 and is the first modern lighthouse on the Chinese coast).  

The kids are standing in front of the storm signals that were hoisted during typhoons to express the strength and distance of the coming storm.  I thought the typhoon warning we had last week was worded funny when it said "level 3 has been hoisted".  Now I understand it was not an awkward translation but a reference to how they used to signal a storm was coming.

It's not a bush, it's a dragon!

And this is a real, working clock behind us - what clever gardeners!

While we're discovering these fun and beautiful parks in Macau, life in Utah continues on without us.  This week we're missing a big, special event - my brother's wedding.  Wanting to still be part of the celebrations, we made a video during our walk through Guia Hill park as well as another park nearby, Lou Lim Leoc Garden.  The following pictures are from both of these parks and were used in the video we made for my brother, Bobby and his bride, Amy.  The captions may not make sense but they're the lines they said during the video, The Top Ten Reasons Bobby and Amy are Getting Married.

2 years of dating is long enough!

True Love! (take 1)

True Love! (take 2)

The magic of Bear Lake - it worked for us!

Why do Bobby and Amy want to get married?  'Cause they want to get married!

Amy memorized the BYU fight song.  Go Cougars!

Bald headed boys are cute!

To Bobby and Amy (if you read this blog), we had lots of fun making the video and wished we could have been there to celebrate your special day.  We can't wait to see your wedding pictures and videos.  Hope it was the best day ever!  We love you and miss you tons!!