Day: November 23, 2010

Places to Go: Kaifeng (Imperial Garden)

One of the places that doesn’t get many tourists, but is worth a visit, is Kaifeng. It has a long history, and even can boast of once having been the imperial capital of China during the Northern Song dynasty. Now, it’s mainly known for its night market when hundreds of locals flood the city center and offer all different kinds of foods to the visitor. The Dragon Pavilion One of Kaifeng’s main attractions, however, is the Imperial Garden (LongTing Gongyuan) where once the emperors of China resided. It’s near the city center and besides its extensive gardens holds several ancient buildings. Visitors can climb the stairs of its main facility, the Dragon Pavilion (Long Ting)  to have a look at the throne room with some displays imitating ancient times, as well as stroll through the park. Most of the park, however is covered by lakes, and you can tour the largest one with boats which are offered right near the Dragon Pavilion. Entrance fees currently start at ¥25 per person.

Behind the Scenes: “Little Venice”

I have a lot of photos from the recent China trip when my parents came to visit. And most of the time there are too many great pictures to choose from, so I usually do double pages, where on one page I feature mainly photos of events and sights, on the other page I focus on the people. So, “Little Venice” is a page where you see several photos included, and … Here’s what I did Admitted, I was lazy with this page. Usually arranging lots of photos neatly takes me a lot of time, but I wanted a quick fix, so I based my layout on a template by Erin Ink that was included in the Digi Files in September (if I remember correctly). But I only used the two background papers from that template and in place of the four smaller photos the template actually had 9 squares for clippping. So, I simply used the Control + T keys to change the format of the 9 squares by dragging the corners until I …