Harbin - The Ice Festival

After an afternoon exploring the center of Harbin and enjoying the winter sports on the river, we took a taxi and headed to the Ice Festival.
Despite the cold that was getting through all your layers of clothes, despite we felt we would loose a finger or a toe, it was definitely worth the trip. From ice bricks, they built "reductions" of churches, castles, temples and other significant buildings from around the world. At night the neon tubes inside the structures are switched on and it becomes magical, being surrounding by these colorful sculptures. They play music in the parc and to keep warm some people are dancing :)
PS: for the occasion I bought a tripod thinking "night pictures mean tripod". What I had not anticipated is how much effort it requires to use a tripod. It's not like you put the camera on and off you go (wouldn't that be great?). No, you actually need to adjust 20 000 screws to reach the perfect angle. I guess that would have been ok if the temperature was not so low (-22C), if I wasn't wearing 2 pairs of gloves on top of each other reducing considerably my agility and if the ground was not made of snow, which per default is not flat nor stable. Changing the lens was not an option either. So despite this I took quite some pictures. They might not be highly focused or horizontal :) but I hope they will give you a feel of how wonderful it was.