Saturday! So our plan was to go to Tianhe caves with Nicole,
yes? Well we thought we were meeting at 10, but it may have been 10:30 but
Nicole was still getting ready so we gave her plenty of time and we were
heading out at nearly 11. The girls bought some milk and then we boarded the
bus into town! It took us over an hour to get in there, but we finally got off
at the right spot near the bus station.
It was a short walk over to that area, so we picked up food
on our way! We found puffy vegetable dumplings and brown rice cornucopia
things, and then Nicole invited us to get these weird things: hot dog sausages
wrapped in a fried tortilla with tomato and spicy sauce, with slices of
cucumbers. I know, it shouldn’t work at all. It really shouldn’t. I don’t
really even like the hot dogs here.
[Kind of like that]
And yet…
First off, we grabbed everything and then Nicole wanted to
sit down to eat, so we went a little further and ate at the square beside Hebin
Park. The dumplings were delicious, and then the hot dog wrap was… very tasty.
Sketchy, but super tasty! It’s definitely one of the weirdest things I thought
I would ever try. But Katie and I finished them and vastly enjoyed them!
The two of us were so full by then, but we still had the
brown rice things, so we ate those, and were completely stuffed as much as we
possibly could be! Barely able to walk, we joined Nicole walking back to the
station to find the bus, 211. Which we did, yay!
And then they said the route had been changed. Boo!
So we started trying to find a way to Huaxi Park, because
Abby and Greg had once before gone to the caves from a route over there. We
stood in a few lines [please bring extra change when you go there, the homeless
like to bring their bowls over and comb the lines], but it was taking forever
and we tried walking across Hebin Park to another bus, and then suddenly it was
about 1 in the afternoon and we were still not going anywhere!
Finally Katie made the brave decision for us: let’s try it
another time, and enjoy this area! So we did. We went into Hebin Park and
checked it out. A little cute amusement park of sorts. We think on the weekends
its 20 per ride, 10 on the weekdays. So it’s a bit pricey, but some of the
rides look fun. There was such a great atmosphere there, and it was great just
walking around and watching the kids have a blast and parents enjoying
themselves!
We ended up going on a ride! It was pretty fun- twists you
around in different directions on the route, pretty fast and jerky. Lots of
fun! Reminds me of that Goofy ride in California Adventures, the flying or car
one or whatever, I’m not too positive. But we enjoyed it!
After a while, we sat down to relax for a short while before
deciding to go see Thor 2 in theaters! We ended up taking a taxi a few streets
down by the train station to the shopping mall, I’m not too sure which one it
was. But it was a very nice mall, a lot like American ones! We strolled through
there for a bit, trying to find the theater.
We were almost there when… we found donuts! Donuts! I didn’t
expect that. They were super pretty, too, for 7 yuan. Pricier than I’d usually
pay, but Katie and I were very curious on how good they might be. And so, we
bought a few- we got three for us three girls and they gave us one free! They
had awesome names for theirs, Katie got ‘Cool Mr. Williams’ and mine was ‘Oreo
Princess’ I think? We got them in a cute box to go, and found the theater.
Thor 2 in 3D, English with Chinese subtitles for a grand
total of: 30 RMB for each of us. That’s 5 USD right there, can you believe
that? Awesome! And they even let us take the donuts in! And their glasses are
nicer! And they gave us free flower tea! Pretty legit, if I do say so.
The movie was vastly enjoyable. Very awesome, we loved it!
We crossed to another section of the mall after to their
‘Sea World’ which was a huge tank of fish and a turtle and some eels and little
sharks. It was kind of cool! We stayed there for a while, watching the
creatures swim around, wrinkling our noses at the eels… We liked it!
Finally we headed out. The day had been a bit cloudy but the
weather wasn’t too terrible. Now, it was after 4 and beginning to get chilly.
However, we went next door to this large alley way area with a freaking ton of
food! Lots of little spots, it was so cool.
We really enjoyed ourselves just wandering through, looking at some of
the food. Weird tofu chunks, some different dumplings, lots of fish, some
oysters, drinks, and more!
It was very promising. We walked through to the end,
and this is a special little area where they don’t use cash.
Instead, what you have to do is at either end of the alley,
you put this money on a card, and just pay with the card. Pretty smart! And
yes, you can take your money off after and I have no idea if there was a fee or
anything- it wasn’t really noticeable, maybe a few jiao if anything!
Okay the food in the alley is more expensive than normal
street food, but it was worth checking out. The first thing Nicole suggested we
buy looked decent, it was on this stone top oven, meat baking on a large
lettuce leaf. It wasn’t until we were sitting down that she told it was PIG
BRAIN.
Of course Katie and I mentally began freaking out. Why
wouldn’t we? Pig brain. She doesn’t like meat enough as it is, and I have a
harder time eating the meat here because they still eat the fat and everything
with it- and if the brain was good meat, then more places would eat it. That
sort of makes sense right?
However, Katie and I were brave. And we ate it. I’m pretty
positive we let Nicole eat at least half of it, but still, we took a few bites!
They had sort of “BBQ’d” it so it added more flavor, thank goodness. It had the
texture of sticky slimy tofu and/or fat, however. Nicole is a darling, but we
couldn’t really say no, so we managed a few bites more. Katie, unfortunately,
had the taste in her mouth for the rest of the night and I just spent the whole
time convincing myself it was tofu… until she brought it up again. Tut, tut.
Haha, anyways. After that, we got some bbq’d meat chunks on
sticks. 25 of them, they were so tiny! It was pretty cute, though. A lot of it
was fat, but they had put on enough flavor that I could eat quite a few of
them, so that was good, it was pretty fun. Of course, the klutz I am, I made
sure we dropped all the sticks… fortunately that was right when we had finished
them all, yay!
Ehm. So we walked through a few more places and then oh! The
triangles! I could have sworn all Katie and Nicole had said when we stopped at
one spot that we were going to eat cheese on corn. So of course I wasn’t too
interested, even when they said they had ice cream and chocolate. But it did
get me suspicious and Katie convinced me to get the coconut one. Turns out,
they you can choose cheese and corn but it doesn’t have to be either! In a warm
heater, they had triangle-shaped baked in pudding. The ‘crust’ top reminded me
of a baked Alaska, that kind of soft but firm cover?
And inside was pudding! Nicole had mango ice cream inside
hers, and her outside was harder and crusty. Katie and I had warm ones, she got
chocolate that had filling corners. They turned out to be really good! I was
very impressed! It was pretty good, over all.
The last thing we tried was tofu. Okay, it was just Nicole
and Katie. I was not interested in tofu and didn’t think we’d need to spend the
extra money. And guess what? They looked like turds. Hard, crusty, oval turds.
Katie said it was disgusting, and I am willing to believe her [and she usually
really enjoys tofu], but we’re not too sure why or how they got to be famous
for being good. Still, Nicole didn’t mind eating the final one, haha.
We took the extra money off the card, and started walking.
We went through a few stations before we realized we still had a while to go to
find a 69 bus, so we ended up boarding the 253, I think it was- Nicole knew it
crossed routes, so we got on there and stood for a good half hour or so before
finally finding a decent stop and sitting on a bench. It was dark by then, and
we were so tired and full! Still, we made it onto the 69 bus and headed home.
Nicole got a seat in the back, Katie got one towards the front and I stayed
with her- and we ran into Abby on the way, too! She had just finished shopping
with one of her students, and they’d gone to some places and such…
The seat beside Nicole opened up, so I left Katie with Abby
and Muriel and joined Nicole back there. She was listening to Christina Perri,
so we listened to the song over again and by the close, we were back on our
street! Which was pretty awesome. We said goodbye to Abby, walked with Nicole
up to our landing, and then she went home to change and we did the same!
Worn out, we got comfy and sat down until Nicole arrived. She’d
gotten into her big comfy pajamas! She looked so Chinese with her slippers,
too! It was awesome! She’s adorable.
With her here, we started planning out Beihai some more,
trying to sort out prices and stuff. It took a little while as she worked on
that and QQ’d the hotel to try and bargain for us- we got 10 off each night and
got a private bathroom- and we’re each having our own bed! Cool! And yes, it’s
close to the beach, yay!
So that’s coming together quite well, huzzah!
Then she did a dangerous thing, and opened up her video
player. We ended up watching four episodes of The Originals [Vampire Diaries
spin-off?], which was pretty amusing. By the time we called it done, it was
about 11:30 and we were all exhausted! Nicole said good bye and headed home,
and Katie and I finally went to bed!
Oh final note: While we were brushing our teeth, I was
glancing through my computer, some really funny posts… no, I am not sharing it
because it’s… well, not rated PG, let’s put it that way- but Katie was nearly
put into hysterics while brushing her teeth and yes, it was quite a scene that
everyone but myself definitely missed out on. It was really awesome. That is
all.
No comments:
Post a Comment