A Bird’s Eye View of Tianjin- A Visit to the TV Tower

Last Sunday we decided to go explore a little bit more of our vast host city, Tianjin.  We thought, from looking at the weather reports, that we were going to have a clear and sunny day like the past few days had been.  Perfect day for going to the top of tower and viewing the enormous city from above, right?.  Well, it wasn't EXACTLY a clear air day…but it was fun going up the tower anyway.

First, though, a fabulouso lunch at a Korean restaurant with the most helpful wait staff. ever. It was really good and we all liked it!  Then, we made our way over to the TV Tower.  

Here's what I've read about the Tiantin TV Tower: it's 415.2m tall, it was built in 1991 (a least that's what wikipedia puts as a date; I've also read on another site  that it was built in 1988) and it is located in the Hexi District.  The tower is surrounded by a small lake (I'm guessing it's a man-made lake based on the angular shape of this lake).  There is a revolving restaurant- actually, it's more of a snack bar at the top.  Okay, not at the tippy top – it's actually about two-thirds up the tower. There is an observation deck one floor below the revolving snack bar which does not rotate.  It cost us 50 yuan per adult which came out to about $20 for the four of us (I should mention that Ava was free since she's below a certain height requirement) to go up the tower in a high speed elevator.  Our ears popped on the way up!

I tried to get the entire tower in the picture frame but it's too tall! And that red arch…you'll get to see that from above a few photos down….

The tower is surrounded by a lake which is frozen (anything would be frozen at these cold temps!). There were lots of people ice skating and chair sledding. We haven't tried chair sledding (it looks like fun but we were too cold to try it that day) but I think all you do is push someone around while sitting on a chair sled. We have to try this!

The view from the top. The girls were so amused to see all the tiny cars and people down below.

More views from the top. I don't know enough about the city to know what exactly we're looking at here. I think that round building that looks like a sea urchin without the spines is the Olympic Center (the one we went to with friends to go sledding; in a previous post).

I think that we're looking at the Water Park. A few photos down you'll see some photos from the Water Park as we took a brisk walk through there.

Remember the photos with the red arch and the ice skating area? This is that from above (can you find the red arch?  It's tiny now!).

I bet you know who these people are!

Little Miss Ava enjoying the view.

You all know who this guy is!

Silly Annika had fun checking out all the "ants" (the cars and people on the ground).

After walking around the observation deck we walked up a narrow spiral stair case to the revolving "restaurant" (actually a snack bar). It completed a full rotation in about 45 minutes. The girls got to drink an interesting orange juice while Mark and I had some sort of tea which was nearly impossible to drink without getting a mouthful of leaves.

We picked a booth to sit in that had doors that could slide closed. The people standing on the upper platform are not on the revolving floor (but we were).

After our drinks were gone we zipped back down the elevator and decided to go for a walk in the Water Park (as seen from above!).  Along the way, both in the tower and throughout the park, we enjoyed a hilarious selection of signs in the very highest quality Engrish (those photos are in a previous post).  

Behind us here is a big ferris wheel. From above it looked like the ferris wheel was in a big carnival area but we didn't do much exploring of that area. It was SO COLD!

That's what the Tiantin TV tower looks like from "afar".

And another view of the tower from even "afarther"…If you come visit us we'll take you up the tower. It was a fun way to get a bird's eye view of the vast city.

After our brisk and super cold walk through the Water Park we headed back to a place we recognized called Magnetic Capital (big happy shopping center across the street from the Olympic Center).  We stopped in at Costa Coffee for hot drinks to warm up our frozen limbs and digits.  Perhaps one of these days we'll remember to where more layers of clothing!