Finally got a chance to sleep in this morning, and it felt good. Especially because tomorrow we have an early morning flight to Qingdao, meaning we’ll need to get up at something like 4 am. Any time before 8 am should be illegal.
So Qingdao. Looking forward to it. We did try to go there a few years ago, but couldn’t get accomodation. When I was single, I wouldn’t have worried about that, I’d’ve just bought the train ticket, then hung around the station looking like a lost tourist until a hotel tout approached me. But I’m not entirely convinced lzh could handle that kind of travelling. So that time we wound up going to Dalian instead, and that was a great trip. Anyway, this time around we managed to book accomodation, so we’re finally going to Qingdao.
And we’re flying. lzh has never flown before. And her mother heard our plans to fly down to Qingdao and said, “I wanna fly on a plane, too!”, and so we’re taking her with us. I’m curious to see how they react to flying. Ma gets terribly carsick, especially when there’s aircon involved, so I’m a little concerned how she’ll react to a pressurised aircraft cabin. lzh used to get terribly carsick on aircon buses, too, but she’s figured out how to deal with that. I’m hoping her chewing gum carsickness cure works on aircraft, too.
We’ll be there for four days, coming back on the 16th, or so the plan goes. We still have to buy our tickets back. I think a train is a good option for that. Four days, enough time to sit by the seaside, visit China’s most famous (but second oldest) brewery, climb Laoshan, eat fresh seafood, and generally get a desperately needed break…. It’ll be good.
Have a good trip! One of my classmates was from Qingdao and he was really disappointed he couldn’t find any Tsingtao beer in Birmingham for us to try.
So many of us take air travel for granted these days, especially here in Europe where we jet off to Ibiza for the weekend without a second thought. We forget that for most people on the planet, travelling by plane is a real novelty or an unrealisable dream. Hope everyone enjoys that part of the travel
@Richard: “One of my classmates was from Qingdao and he was really disappointed he couldn’t find any Tsingtao beer in Birmingham for us to try.”
We regularly buy Tsingtao beer from our local Tesco at Southwest of England in a city much smaller than Birmingham. LocalChinese shop have Tsingtao beer as well.
@Richard, cheers, mate.
@Richard and Sue: Tsingtao beer, at least in my experience, is a bit like Guinness, in that the version you get in each location is slightly different. I remember sitting in a pub in Hong Kong in utter astonishment at the flavour of the Tsingtao I had just ingested: A quick glance at the label showed a 5% alcohol content, which is considerably higher than in most parts of mainland China. I am looking forward to a trip to China’s version of St James’ Gate.