Sweet Shoppe Designs

Autumn Rhapsody by Penny Springmann & Amanda Heimann
Day & Night Alpha by Julie Billingsley
The Alpha Files No. 7 by Krystal Hartley
Font: DJB Karen T (by Darcy Baldwin)

Full double page:


Journaling reads:
After visiting the ancient imperial palace, we went to the so-called Iron Tower. Actually, the tower isn’t made of iron. The clay tiles which were used to cover the outside of the structure simply have the appearance of iron. That’s why this rather old building is called “Iron Tower” by everyone.
After we arrived, we went for a walk through the beautiful grounds enclosing the tower. There are some pathways aside the main road, and we followed one of the trails along a little pond.
The river finally took us to a little lake at its end where visitors can rent boats or simply rest in some of the long corridors with all its beautiful woodwork and the ancient paintings in the beams. Well, the paintings actually aren’t that old anymore, since everything has been renovated, I’m sure several times. But still, I love looking at them, because each picture tells another story of life in the ancient times.
We walked all the way to the end of the corridor, across a winding bridge that led to a little island in the middle of the lake that again has more of these traditional type pagodas etc. I just love the deep red of the painted color contrasting against the lush green of the surroundings.
From this little island we could see the city wall again, which has been restored and is quite prominent in Kaifeng.
On our way back to the car, Ma & Pa ran into some Chinese students and where glad to engage them in a conversation.
Though we did a lot of walking that day, we also got to see a lot of the traditional side of China.