City by the Sea

On Friday we flew to Qing Dao on the Yellow Sea. This is one city I have been wanting to visit since we moved to China, but Danny always found somewhere else he wanted to go! We finally had a very good excuse to go explore when our dear friends moved there this summer rather unexpectedly. We know Qing Dao for the brewery that resides there, Tsing Tao, and also because the sailing events were held here during the Olympics. We had no idea what a fantastic city we would be visiting! By the end of the weekend, the boys had decided we would move there and live in a big hotel like our friends!!

The flight to get there is less than one hour from Tianjin, so we were there on Friday morning well before lunch! We checked into the Le Meridien (the beautiful hotel our friend is managing) and wandered around the shopping mall next door looking for lunch and wondering why Tianjin didn't have a nice "mall"! After lunch some of us went to the famous May 4th Square, where in 1919 protesters demanded sovereignty. It was granted, but in 1922 China began ruling again. The square is very close to the Olympics site and was a fantastic place to explore on a late summer day!

We browsed through the outdoor market and saw everything imaginable!! Even locals dressed up in quite scary costumes trying to make a few RMB by charging anyone who wanted a picture with them!

We enticed the kids to do more walking by bribing them with ice cream! At this point we were way out numbered...8 children to 4 adults so we allowed them to climb on anything and everything they could! The locals were definitely trying to figure out which child belonged to who!!

After ice cream the rest of our group arrived and we walked along the sea until late in the afternoon. We did manage to go into the sailing museum, only to completely infuriate the security guard. The kids had all ran intothe museum and went straight to a huge model of the city. Theguard was yelling at us to buy tickets, but we played ignorant because we knew we were only staying for a couple of minutes. He didn't know what to do, so he just watched with an unhappy look upon his face!

And you can't have a city by the sea without a Hooters, or should I say sHooters!! How funny is that? At least they acknowledge that they are completely copying off of the "real" restaurant!!

My feet were exhausted when we finally made it back to the hotel!! Now, looking back on all of these photos I am once again completely grateful for the wonderful friendships we have built in just 2 1/2 years!! We are extremely blessed!

More to come...