Wednesday, November 15
LinksHome November 5
The China Hotel has a fabulous breakfast buffet that we remembered from our first trip here, so the morning was good. The kids love the fact that the hotel serves very fancy, “high-end” food - you guessed it, hash browns, just like McDonald’s. Stephanie actually calls them “Donalds”.
Funny thing happened. I struck up a conversation with a family in the restaurant who had their new baby daughter with them. They have had a very difficult adoption trip, and as a result, are here alone, with no travel group. We ended up talking with them quite a bit, and discovered that Jackie, Bob and baby Leah are from New York. In fact, Emily decided that Bob is her new best friend. She sat with him and talked his ear off for the entire time we were there. It was really cute.
In the afternoon, we decided to take a taxi and go do some shopping (I know, you’re shocked to read that!) We went to a pedestrian shopping district called Beijing Road, and spent hours wandering around, not buying much. Emily was the sole recipient of new things….she bought herself some gaudy, fuschia coloured shoes, complete with sequins, and matching lipstick. Oh my goodness, I could just die of embarrassment! We went into the shoe store with me thinking about buying funky, trendy running shoes for her, and she went mental for these shiny, awful things. So, I bought them. Then she reminded me that I had promised to buy her a lipstick ever since auntie put some on her in JiuJiang. We went into a little shop, picked out the gaudiest colour they had, and I bought it.
Before going out to dinner tonight, Emily let me know that she intended to wear said gaudy shoes, and the ugly lipstick, so she did. She got herself all tarted up and out for dinner we went. We went to a hotpot restaurant (notice a theme developing?) and had a great meal. The girls were really good, and only 90% of the patrons and employees were overtly gawking at me (actually, probably 100% but the other 10% were slightly more subtle than turning around, smiling and pointing at me).
As previously mentioned, we had the taxi ride from hell back to the hotel. GuangZhou traffic really is something to behold. It’s busy like Hong Kong, only the rules of the road are either non-existent or drivers just don’t care. We had about 5 near misses (really, really near) in a 5 minute taxi ride. The good thing is that it’s cheap. The ride back was Ұ7 or about $1.10 CAD.
When we got back to our luxury digs (can you tell I’m happy about that?) the girls watched some movies to settle down, and then we were all asleep relatively early.
