Saturday, July 26, 2008

Saturday Morning - Beijing

It's Saturday morning. I got about 5 hours of sleep last night. I think a train went through the room (or maybe it was just Pete snoring??). We decided to take a cab down to the Bird's Nest Stadium last night. We were not able to get in or even all that close because of all of the security but we did manage to get a couple of photos from outside the fence. There were literally thousands of people leaving the stadium as we were dropped off. We think they were there rehearsing for the ceremonies. It is amazing to see just how many people live just in this city of China. They have implemented an odd/even license plate rule for driving. If you have an even plate you can drive certain days and the same thing for odd. Even with this rule in place there is still a lot of traffic. There are 1300 new cars on the road in China every day - just amazing.




I'll back track a little and tell you that we went out to have an authentic Chinese dinner (Pete's choice). We had some interesting food. There was a shrimp dish that came out with the head, tail, shell and all. I tried ONE. Next was a mutton dish which was actually very good but very spicy for my taste. Last was a brown rice type dish with pork and duck (my choice). This was a very tasty dish. We spent about $15 for both of us including 2 cans of soda a piece. (Mark R, if you are reading this, Yes, Bill had two cans of Pepsi in China and I can tell you that they taste no better over here. I cannot wait to find a real can of Coke). What is really amazing is the service that you get at restaurants over here. They are constantly trying to please you and make sure you are 100% happy. 


Breakfast was good. They always have American style breakfast foods at the hotels. Scrambled eggs, pancakes, waffles, etc... Pete was a little more daring with the Chinese breakfast foods then I was.


Bill

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