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Published: July 19th 2012
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For the second time in my life, I get to celebrate a “birth-weekend” – an event which occurs when you find yourself on the other side of the international date line and your birthday falls on a Saturday - because then Saturday is the day of your birthday but then Sunday is when your birthday happens back home! The first such “birth-weekend” happened exactly 5 years ago in the great country of Australia and you can conveniently read about it on this blog: http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/Western-Australia/Perth/blog-186009.html
Anyways, Saturday, July 14th was indeed my 26th (!!!) birthday. And the Weather Gods (aka the official Chinese government weather controllers/cloud seeders – because even the Gods are a government agency in China) decided to shine down on me! The weather was reminiscent of Southern California aka the greatest weather possible. Sunny, BLUE SKIES (say WHAT?!), dry heat…fantastic! In honour of one of the clearest days ever in Beijing, I headed to the CCTV Tower, which is a tower on our side of town. Went to the revolving restaurant buffet which was pretty good – food was pretty good but not the best – that’s standard for all-you-can-eat. Views were AMAZING. And a highlight
MY TWINS!!!
THEY'RE SO CUTE!!! was that we’d pass pictures of the tower with “YOU ARE HERE” writen with arrows point at the tower. Pretty random
Our ticket for lunch included a visit to the observation deck which was full of loud people. We also got to visit this random exhibit of all things CCTV (Chinese government TV). After we’d had enough tower, we headed down to the final thing included with the ticket – the aquarium at the base of the tower. It was generally a loud, smelly experience with lots of depressing-looking fish with their tanks being tapped on. But the PENGUIN exhibit was adorable, and it’s always fun going through those tunnel things where the fish are swimming all around you. Not as good as the one in Western Australia but still really cool. It was just really hot and sweaty in there, and there were waaay too many screaming children.
To celebrate my birthday, I headed out to Sanlitun for the evening to enjoy something I haven’t had in far too long – Turkish food. I’d scoped out a restaurant a while ago, apparently it’s where the Turkish ambassador himself eats. So I knew it’d
be good. I had a good group of friends with me – Fernanda, Liz, two new interns from Portland (Shavaun and Colin), Si Qi (a Chinese intern), Humphrey and his friend Nick. The food was amazing and it was a really fun night. After dinner, we wanted to go out for some drinks but keep the experience low-budget so we went to (I kid you not) a liquor store with tables and stools. It was actually an incredibly busy place with a great vibe which was HILARIOUS. We had a great time and I had a great birthday!!
Sunday I decided to take it easy and hit up the Sunday pool party/brunch at the Doubletree hotel. Basically it was a BBQ where you had access to the rooftop garden and pool. It was sooo relaxing. There was also mimosas. That made things even better. After the BBQ, I went with Fernanda and Humphrey to a market where they sell all things TEA. We did a tea tasting and stock-piled on some great tea. All in all a relaxing and enjoyable day 😊
So it was another successful birth-weekend – and also my last weekend
in Beijing! Pretty crazy how quickly things have gone!
-Dafne
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Maggie
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Screen behind you
What was playing on the screen? It looks interesting