The QingDao Trip Part 2

After a late, late night on Friday, I woke up feeling far better than I deserved and Alice and I stumbled downstairs to the large banquet room where the hotel serves buffet breakfast and lunch. It was a pretty impressive spread and I ate enough to put me right back into a food coma after eating that I didn't come out of until around noon. When we finally pulled ourselves together we got directions to the "#1 Bathing Beach"... we discovered after an interesting bus ride there that the number system has nothing to do with quality and everything to do with location from East to West along the coast. As it happens, "#1 Bathing Beach" could also go by more descriptive names, such as: "#1 Most Crowded, Covered-in-Shell-Fragments Beach", "#1 Place to See Asians in Inappropriate or Non-Existent Swim Wear" or simply "A Good Place Not to Go, And If You Do (Sucker), Make Sure You Don't Eat What Looks Like a Hot Dog and is Being Sold For 1 Kuai (12.5 cents.)"

What I can say for it is that "#1 Bathing Beach" is the site of the TsingTao Beer Plaza, which is basically a mini-beer festival and we got some really good kabobs with northern spices and some cold beer, which made me feel slightly better about having been 10 feet from the ocean but having not been able to go in because of the press of naked or semi-naked Asian children playing in the surf. The bitterness continued to fade as we wandered West along the coastline in the general direction of downtown and our hotel and stopped along the way at some of the cities more famous scenic spots. This weekend happened to also be the Qingdao International Regatta and we got to see tons of boats practicing off the coast while we had dinner at a semi-reputable looking seafood establishment.