| Exploring the City | |
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2007-10-18
We had the full day to explore today, so we just started walking around the city, checking things out. We worked our way into the old city to see if there were any cool old German buildings, and then headed back to the waterfront. We saw some military museums and got on an old Soviet destroyer, and then worked our way up the road past the Qingdao aquarium, before ending up at a beach, where my camera ran out of battery power. We went back into the new city for dinner, and had some great food, although the evening had a bit of a sour ending when I left my wallet in the taxi on the way home, along with a few hundred dollars in cash in it. D'oh! |
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This is our hotel. It's built in an old British prision, quite clean and quiet, and 3 rooms don't even make up 100$ a night.
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We started walking towards the old city ...
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... past some old temple thingie ...
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... and then along the waterfront.
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Oooh military boats! (Navy people seem to get a little angry if you call those things boats. "they're SHIPs, son".)
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Hey that looks sort of old-ish and Germany-ish.
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There are a boatload of tourists here today. I mean SHIPload.
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Everybody wanted a shell or fifty.
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This is a more expensive hotel, that, every time we walked in, felt a little weird and uncomfortable.
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Walking into the old city area.
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Unconventional transportation.
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Some local kids' school.
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Hey, that's an old church or something.
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There must be an art school near here, because there are a zillion students out front painting.
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They're pretty good.
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There are also a bunch of people getting their wedding photos taken here. We counted at least 5 different couples.
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This is one way to dry fish out.
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Continuing to walk around the city.
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It's still early in the day, so traffic ain't so bad.
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This is that same pier we visited last night in the dark.
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We worked our way over to where all the boats, and seemingly more people were.
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Ensure the Healty [sic] Development of economy.
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That's a lot of fishing boats! At least I assume they're fishing boats....
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High quality beaches!
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There is a little neighbourhood with some small buildings and stuff here.
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And a little seafood store.
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Emma decided to go supermodel on us.
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Zoltan took a photo, but I don't think she was interested.
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We ended up in some military museum, with lots of old .... uh ... military stuff.
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Shoot down the imperialist capitalist pig-dogs!!!!
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Or just pose for them!
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Tanks and empty beer cans. A match made in heaven.
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They have some sort of hovercraft thing here, but we didn't way to pay the exta 5$ to go see it.
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But our ticket got us on to the destroyer, which was cool.
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They're old Soviet boats the Chinese bought in the 50s or something.
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Those subs don't look terribly seaworthy.
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I have no idea what those things are.
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Continuing along our way, we walked along the caostal road, past a park.
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It's very clean looking.
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Next stop, the local aquarium.
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It has lots of fishy things inside it.
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Fishies!
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The outside of the aquarium.
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Becareful falling!
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We continued walking towards this beach area.
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There was plenty o' nice stuff to see.
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A little market on the beach.
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There weren't too many people in the water, on account of it being not so warm out.
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After some resting at the hotel .... dinner time! This restaurant shows you all the possible dishes you can order before doing so.
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It was pretty nice and comfortable, although the waitresses we hella hard to understand. The accent is a little weird in this neck of the woods.
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Here is a complete listing of all employees here, in case you were wondering. The most interesting thing about this restaurant? In a country with 99,99% Microsoft Windows usage where even the concept of an Apple Mac doesn't make sense, they used an Apple TV to play their music.
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We stopped off for some coffee before calling it a night.
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We call this "fake Starbucks"
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