Tuesday 28th July 2009 Qingdao

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Tuesday 28th July 2009 Qingdao
We hopped on a public bus after breakfast that we hoped would bring us a small bit up the coast and we’d have a look at the city. It brought us past the Olympic park and to Beach Number 1 before veering off and heading into the industrial city zone so we hoped off and got one on the other side back to the Park. They held the sailing events for the Olympics here so they built a stadium, no water in it though, must have just been for medals and a park with a fountain with the 5 rings in the middle. We wandered on a little bit more and found the beach, it was packed with loads of families sitting out but hiding from the sun under rain umbrellas, it was quite a sight. The water was very shallow also, up to your knees for about 250 meters but they were all loving it, the sea was packed to with everyone splashing around in the foot of water. We sat in a little beach bar and had a drink looking at the spectacle of a Chinese beach resort.

In the evening we decided to go back to the Brewery area to some of the restaurants that we saw. But on arriving there not one had anything resembling an English menu, I don’t know how they fed the Olympic crowd only 9 months ago, because I am sure they didn’t all go eating jellyfish, which they actually eat quite a lot of here also. I think a lot of the places were ones were you picked fish out of a tank and an awful lots of shells. It all seemed a little bit outside our comfort zone so we went back to a cool arcade that was full of more restaurants. We found a nice place with an English menu and picked a few things. We probably would have been better just pointing blindly at the Chinese one though because what we were presented with will probably go down as the strangest meal either of us will ever meet. The Special Chicken was very special indeed in that there was every part on the plate except parts you could eat, a plate of chicken bone, fat, skin, legs, claws and head in some sauce. The pork & garlic was pieces of garlic chopped up as thick as chips so you couldn’t even find or taste the pork among the 74 giant cloves used to cook it, and the deep-fried sweet corn was almost the strangest of all; all the corns were in batter with hundreds and thousands spread on top, why??? It also turned out to be almost the most expensive meal we’ve had whilst traveling. The waiter asked if we wanted to take our food home with us, and I responded it is all al bit different. We got back to the hostel and the kitchen was still open so at least we were able to order a pizza which was actually really good, Pesto based with pepperoni, delicious.

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