Catch up time...

This daily blogging thing gets harder when you have nothing that even closely resembles a normal sleep pattern or day-to-day schedule, so I'm going to try and catch up on last week in two or three posts.

The End of the Qingdao Trip:

Alice and I got a late start Sunday morning but packed in a whole lot of tourism before our flight. Right next to our hotel was the Wusi (5-4) Park which has a huge red sculpture that is supposed to symbolize the five winds that the city is known for (if that last part wasn't so clear it's because I didn't really understand the significance myself.) Walking around the edge of the park we ate at the Bellagio Restaurant (no relation to the Las Vegas hotel unfortunately) and did a lot of souvenir shopping. From the park we hopped on a bus which, for 12.5 cents, took us all the way out to the fairgrounds of the 16th QingDao International Beer Festival. The festival was a lot like an alcoholic state fair with a lot more stages and pavilions. There was a pretty impressive array of carnival rides, which I'm not sure are the best things to combine with over-consumption of beer, and a lot of really good food. After a return to the Bellagio Restaurant (it actually turned out to be really fantastic) we made it to the airport running a little late to find our flight was delayed an hour and a half. Sweet.