... the big b.

with national holiday still continuing and qingdao crossed off the list, it was time for destination #2. beijing. my wuhan travel buddies and i headed to beijing for one key purpose: the wedding of our foc friends, brock and heather. we took a fancy, overpriced train with comfortable, spacious seats and arrived to beijing late in the night. after a taxi ride, we were 'home' at our host's apartment. next day was wedding day at the old summer palace. post-wedding, it was drinks, dinner, an ktv.
the next day was quite relaxing. it included a street food breakfast, a visit to the beijing hutongs (old, government-regulated apartments), a pizza lunch, a micro-brewery visit, a christian bookstore trip, and a failed trip to the movie theater. busy day. and, the day after that ... it was home to wuhan.
soli deo gloria.

to beer country and back.

china's 'fourth of july'/independence day (actually called 'national day') is in the first week of october. in order to celebrate such an event, the entire first week of the month of october is a holiday. a week off of school ... what to do?!

last year, i traveled out west to have a relaxing week with pandas. this year, i traveled north to have a relaxing weekend with beer, mountains, and the sea. destination: qingdao, china.

for your information, qingdao is the brewing city for tsingtao beer. (american people says 'tsingdao; chinese people say 'qingdao' ... totally different.) i'm not sure about the popularity of this beer in america, but i can certainly say that is more than just well-known in this oriental land.

my vacation to qingdao only lasted about three days. traveling with three other wuhan friends, we got there on a Sunday afternoon. after checking into our hostel, we (mostly i) booked it to a bbq restaurant where i had every intention of binging eating seafood. after bbq, we picked up a few grocery bags of beer. (yes, you can buy beer-in-a-bag in qingdao.) i was quite excited for the brewery tour early the next morning. we left for the tour around 9am. the tour was fine; it was interesting ... and surprisingly short. but, what came after the tour was just ... madness. beer street is directly across from the brewery. beer street is a long street packed full of different vendors for beer and seafood. i specifically ordered four bottles of beer. and, if i would have done my research, i would have known that they don't serve glasses or bottles. no, instead they served pitchers. so, here we were ... 11am ... with four full pictures of beer. the rest of the day was a bit of a blur ... not only the result of the pitchers of beer, but also a blur of flocks of people taking our picture by a 'red-swirly-thing' that we didn't get the chance to appreciate. that evening ended with a walk on the beach, a nap, and basically being dragged to a completely empty roof-top bar. we had train tickets to leave on that following day. i was open to the idea of just having a relaxing day on the town, but my travel partners were quite set on seeing a specific mountain. after a rather frustrating morning, we finally were on our way. two hours later, we got there and paid to go in. less than an hour later, we were on our way home.

next destination: beijing.

soli deo gloria.