More KFC coffee...

The Summer Palace was beautiful, especially with a stomach full of KFC coffee! Ugh, I’m looking forward to home-cooked meals. It was sunny and cold, and Rodrigo, Frederik and I found real cappuccino on the palace grounds. We also found a building under construction that was shielded by tarps – not your traditional blue though; the tarps were covered in an image of the building underneath. Just like the real thing… A lot of the Beijing monuments are currently under construction in preparation for the Olympics. I have no idea how that city is going to handle the games. It would definitely be interesting to be there… At the summer Palace, old men use what look like mops with refillable water bottles attached to write poetry on the pavement. One guy could even write mirror characters with his right and left hands. It was amazing. And out on the lake, there were groups of fishermen chasing and spearing fish that they could see through the ice. The ice wasn’t completely solid around the edges and was making the most every wailing sound. I had read about that before but had never heard it myself.
The Forbidden City was amazing too – it’s enormous! I can’t wait to watch The Last Emperor again now that I’ve been there. By the time we had some cup noodle and headed towards the Square (right in front of the Forbidden city) it was freezing and we decided to come back to Tiananmen in the morning in hopes of seeing Mao’s body. After relaxing for a while back at the hotel, we headed back to Wangfujing for hot pot and scary food on sticks. There is a whole street of food stalls that cater to tourists… I think they are designed more for photo taking than for eating. Frederik ate some snake-type things, Dennis went for starfish and I ended up with what was supposed to be fried banana… but was actually just dough. I gave the starfish a shot too, but it was disgusting. Sadly, but fortunately, there was a homeless guy hanging about the stalls, so we gave him everything we couldn’t eat, and some beer to wash it down with. Frederik even bought him some lamb skewers as an apology for the other gross stuff. Across the street from the stalls was a restaurant with the best name – California Beef Noodle King U.S.A. – with a picture of a Mr. Lee… Interesting. After a drink at the Outback Steakhouse, Dennis was off to meet this friends and the rest of us went out to Hou Hai for drinks. Hou Hai was a cute little neighbourhood full of little boutiques, restaurants and bars surrounding a lake. We chose a bar with a foos ball table and some dice and went to town! I hadn’t played in 4 months and without Blind Goalie, my skills are less than impressive. Thankfully, the bar staff didn’t care about our skills and we made friends! I even managed to try Carlsberg Chill… not something I recommend.