China, Day Eight (written on Day 12)
Right. This journal entry will be throughly rubbish, as the order of events are already drifting away from me, and Lewis is staring over my shoulder as he wants the laptop to watch something. ¬.¬
I forgot to mention the rather spectacular banana split I got in a little cafe after the doll shop. =D
So, the day after the square, Lewis and I decided to go on our own adventure, which initially turned out to be a bit of a disaster.
Our target was the Olympic Village - you know,the big crows nest stadium, the big bubbly swimming pool, all that jazz? Well we got some directions off John, and off we went happily onto the subway. "Hang on!" I declare, on the subway "How about we get off at the stop, which is the transfer to line 8 which says "Olympic Stadium, Olympic Something Else etc.?"
"No!" Says my other half, all confident. "John says if we get off here and walk north we'll be in the middle of the park."
"Alrighty" And I settled down on the subway to watch the little tv re-run, its olympic adverts with the very smiley pretty girl, in a very long white dress, singing something or other while children flock around her. What children flocking around a girl in a white dress has to do with athletcis escapes me, but it's on a loop on the subway and the moving pictures end up rather hypnotic.
So off the subway we clamber, and we're in what is definatly a residential area. But! John told us to walk north and we'd end up there, so we walked north. And then north somemore. And then we saw what looked like a stadium so we headed off in that general direction. After what seemed like an hour (Lewis has just claimed it was 15 minutes, but I think he's lying.) We decided to look at the map, as this wee stadium seemed in relative isolation. Turns out we weren't that far away so we headed off and found the Olympic village - Hurrah!
Which basically consisted of a very long pathway, the afore mentioned stadiums and lots of misleading signs claiming there was a shopping mall and toilets. Also, in Beijing there are these little textured cobbles everywhere along the pavements, presumably for blind people to find their way along it. There as an epic one along this avenue, although why i don't know. Why would a blind person want to go and "look" at the stadiums?! (LOL!, sorry I know there's more to it than that, but you have to wonder.)
The swimming pool stadium, and the security check point. They have these everywhere - even in the subway. You trundle thorugh, stick your bag through a xray machine and then nothing happens - they peer at it through a screen, but mostly seem to sit around chatting and drinking tea out of flasks. I wonder what would happen if they did find anything?
The Crow's nest. Lewis speculated on what it would be like if there really was crows that large - I suggested that we wouldn't be walking so close to it lest we be baby crow food. It is rather awesome to look at, but we decided against going inside as the ques were pretty big. And it's just a stadium, after all. How intresting could it be inside?
And while this isn't really part of the olympic village, it is pretty awesome. It's a seven star hotel, in the shape of a dragon. See it's head to the left? and it's body? I would loved to have gone inside and had something to eat, but I imagine at seven stars that would've been it for the holiday spending money.
These signs carefully redirected us around areas of grass, which was rather lovely.
I also had a strange experience in a toliet - I went to the ladies, and there was a queue, as usual. So resigned to waiting in this queue, and settled down to stare at the walls in a bit of a dull stupor. The suddenly this wee old lady was grabbing my hand and dragging me to into the bathroom (the queue went out the door) to the front, and shoved me in front of a cubical which contained a western style upright toilet. She made the gesture indicating that I should use it, and then trundled back to her spot in the queue. Bewildered, I grabbed the offered chance and used the loo. I felt guilty as I walked past all the other waiting ladies, but obviously this wee old lady's decision that the bored looking westener should get to use the facilties first did not bare questioning. Very odd.
We had been informed by John that here was a TGI's in a building nearby the Olympic village that looked like "it was from the stoneage." As you can see from the skyline, nothing remotely stoneagey. We were picturing a big building that looked like it was a mud hut or something. We found one building like this, and on reflection I should've taken a picture. But it was a gym, and not a TGI's at all.
So we basiclaly wandered around for the rest of the afternoon in search of some sort of stoneagey bulding near a hotel, with no luck. We passed a few interesting looking restuarnts, but by then it was two o'clock, and many resturants seem to close then before opening for the evening. We even found buildings that WERE huts, although admitadly they were part of the Chinese Minority Culture Park - not somewhere that would've hosted a TGI's. Oh well.
In the end we decided to head on home, as by this point it was FOUR O'CLOCK (baring in mind we had probably started looking for TGI's about half oneish.) So we headed for the nearest subway (about a 20 minute walk) and en route we found a bakers! Yay! Sustiance! So we bought what we thought were two pizza breads.
They weren't.
They did in fact have baked cheese on top, but it was that sweet brioch type bread. And inside there was, what we think, may have, spiced chicken floss. Not something I would've chosen to have, and still wouldn't, but was hungry enough to eat.
Got on the subway, headed home. Had a brief rest and then headed out for an Ethopian Dinner, which was very tasty and involved lots of yummy chickpea and chicken and beef, and a weird type of pancake called Injera, which it is all served on. Which is used as the plate, and cutlery. You tear a bit off, scoop up your selected goop, and enjoy. Very very tasty, but very very filling too.
And on that note, I shall write about day's nine, ten and eleven tomorrow as we have an easly start as we head off the forbidden city. I shall try to write about our trip to the botanic gardens by bus before we go, as it is mostly lots of pictures and wobbly bus.
The reason I have flagged in my journal entries you will have already read about, so those of you that were hanging by the edge of your seat I aplogise. But there you go.
I forgot to mention the rather spectacular banana split I got in a little cafe after the doll shop. =D
So, the day after the square, Lewis and I decided to go on our own adventure, which initially turned out to be a bit of a disaster.
Our target was the Olympic Village - you know,the big crows nest stadium, the big bubbly swimming pool, all that jazz? Well we got some directions off John, and off we went happily onto the subway. "Hang on!" I declare, on the subway "How about we get off at the stop, which is the transfer to line 8 which says "Olympic Stadium, Olympic Something Else etc.?"
"No!" Says my other half, all confident. "John says if we get off here and walk north we'll be in the middle of the park."
"Alrighty" And I settled down on the subway to watch the little tv re-run, its olympic adverts with the very smiley pretty girl, in a very long white dress, singing something or other while children flock around her. What children flocking around a girl in a white dress has to do with athletcis escapes me, but it's on a loop on the subway and the moving pictures end up rather hypnotic.
So off the subway we clamber, and we're in what is definatly a residential area. But! John told us to walk north and we'd end up there, so we walked north. And then north somemore. And then we saw what looked like a stadium so we headed off in that general direction. After what seemed like an hour (Lewis has just claimed it was 15 minutes, but I think he's lying.) We decided to look at the map, as this wee stadium seemed in relative isolation. Turns out we weren't that far away so we headed off and found the Olympic village - Hurrah!
Which basically consisted of a very long pathway, the afore mentioned stadiums and lots of misleading signs claiming there was a shopping mall and toilets. Also, in Beijing there are these little textured cobbles everywhere along the pavements, presumably for blind people to find their way along it. There as an epic one along this avenue, although why i don't know. Why would a blind person want to go and "look" at the stadiums?! (LOL!, sorry I know there's more to it than that, but you have to wonder.)
The swimming pool stadium, and the security check point. They have these everywhere - even in the subway. You trundle thorugh, stick your bag through a xray machine and then nothing happens - they peer at it through a screen, but mostly seem to sit around chatting and drinking tea out of flasks. I wonder what would happen if they did find anything?
The Crow's nest. Lewis speculated on what it would be like if there really was crows that large - I suggested that we wouldn't be walking so close to it lest we be baby crow food. It is rather awesome to look at, but we decided against going inside as the ques were pretty big. And it's just a stadium, after all. How intresting could it be inside?
And while this isn't really part of the olympic village, it is pretty awesome. It's a seven star hotel, in the shape of a dragon. See it's head to the left? and it's body? I would loved to have gone inside and had something to eat, but I imagine at seven stars that would've been it for the holiday spending money.
These signs carefully redirected us around areas of grass, which was rather lovely.
I also had a strange experience in a toliet - I went to the ladies, and there was a queue, as usual. So resigned to waiting in this queue, and settled down to stare at the walls in a bit of a dull stupor. The suddenly this wee old lady was grabbing my hand and dragging me to into the bathroom (the queue went out the door) to the front, and shoved me in front of a cubical which contained a western style upright toilet. She made the gesture indicating that I should use it, and then trundled back to her spot in the queue. Bewildered, I grabbed the offered chance and used the loo. I felt guilty as I walked past all the other waiting ladies, but obviously this wee old lady's decision that the bored looking westener should get to use the facilties first did not bare questioning. Very odd.
We had been informed by John that here was a TGI's in a building nearby the Olympic village that looked like "it was from the stoneage." As you can see from the skyline, nothing remotely stoneagey. We were picturing a big building that looked like it was a mud hut or something. We found one building like this, and on reflection I should've taken a picture. But it was a gym, and not a TGI's at all.
So we basiclaly wandered around for the rest of the afternoon in search of some sort of stoneagey bulding near a hotel, with no luck. We passed a few interesting looking restuarnts, but by then it was two o'clock, and many resturants seem to close then before opening for the evening. We even found buildings that WERE huts, although admitadly they were part of the Chinese Minority Culture Park - not somewhere that would've hosted a TGI's. Oh well.
In the end we decided to head on home, as by this point it was FOUR O'CLOCK (baring in mind we had probably started looking for TGI's about half oneish.) So we headed for the nearest subway (about a 20 minute walk) and en route we found a bakers! Yay! Sustiance! So we bought what we thought were two pizza breads.
They weren't.
They did in fact have baked cheese on top, but it was that sweet brioch type bread. And inside there was, what we think, may have, spiced chicken floss. Not something I would've chosen to have, and still wouldn't, but was hungry enough to eat.
Got on the subway, headed home. Had a brief rest and then headed out for an Ethopian Dinner, which was very tasty and involved lots of yummy chickpea and chicken and beef, and a weird type of pancake called Injera, which it is all served on. Which is used as the plate, and cutlery. You tear a bit off, scoop up your selected goop, and enjoy. Very very tasty, but very very filling too.
And on that note, I shall write about day's nine, ten and eleven tomorrow as we have an easly start as we head off the forbidden city. I shall try to write about our trip to the botanic gardens by bus before we go, as it is mostly lots of pictures and wobbly bus.
The reason I have flagged in my journal entries you will have already read about, so those of you that were hanging by the edge of your seat I aplogise. But there you go.