A Tour de Food

Yesterday, we (all 89 of us!) went to a traditional Chinese restaurant. We were all exhausted from the night before, but we woke up pretty quickly when we got off the bus to go into the restaurant. Looming above us was the Pearl Tower, the third-tallest building in the world. It's a really interesting structure because of the tripod base and the "Space Needle" at the top, but especially because of the lights at night.

(The whole area is amazing to see at night).

The restaurant seated us in a room with massive windows overlooking the water, which provided a great view of the skyline and river. But that was not the main attraction of this trip ...

The food was very interesting, to say the least. Yes, I tried everything (except the duck tongue), and most of it tasted good. Here's the rundown:

Duck (whole)

Deep-Fried Breaded Octopus

Jellyfish

Mushrooms

Baked Octopus

Duck Tongue

Tripe

Whole Chicken

And when a whole chicken comes out, you know that means someone has to mess with the head ...

Traffic & Weather Together, on The 8s...

This is a marketing campaign used by WCBS 880 NY radio. I'm using it because it creates a nice outline for this post:

Traffic

There's a lot of it here. And as I mentioned before, the roads are anarchical. I compare most places to NYC, and continuing that with Shanghai, this is a more aggressive NYC without pedestrian right-of-way. Cars cut one another off (forget about signaling) and barrel though walk lights without regard for pedestrians. The pedestrians are equally aggressive, but are clearly aware that no vehicle - bus, truck, car or bike - will stop for them.

There are a lot of bikes here, and some small bike lanes. The trains run above the roads and are as modern, if not moreso, than U.S. trains (which is no surprise). I don't have any pictures for this post, so I'll save a discussion of the roadways and buildings for a day when I have pictures. I went to a mall and a park the other day, so I'll try to get those pictures from someone else since I didn't have my camera. If you're into shopping, that post will be for you.

Weather

So far, We've had one sunny, one cloudy and one rainy day. It has been in the 70s or 80s morning through night, and it is very humid. Not Amazon humid I'm sure, but it's bad enough that even the hotel sheets and air are a little damp, and outside - even in the cooler areas - it can be very difficult to bare. The notion of walking around without sweating is pretty laughable to us all at this point.

8s ... and 4s

The number 8 is similar to a Chinese word for "goodbye," but more importantly, apparently the number is good luck. In fact, phone numbers cost more to buy when they have more 8s in them! The opposite is true of the number 4, since that number is associated with death.

8!