Chengdu, Zachary's Birthday: Day 15

We started the day on the sleeper train from Xian which led to an early awakening as the train came alive.  Joshua woke up argumentative, complaining about Zachary waking him up. I put a quick stop to the arguments. A Chinese woman from the next set of bunks gave Zachary a nice handmade birthday card.

Emerging from the station at Chengdu we stood in a taxi line for 20 minutes.  The plan was to take two cabs to the hotel. The first cab we tried refused to take us and the driver just didn't answer when asked why.  I assumed that it was because of the huge amount of luggage. A second driver also refused us but explained that there was construction and traffic jams between  the station and the hotel and so he didn't want to do it. He suggested that the subway would be much quicker. So we took the subway. It was clean and modern.

We got off in a station connected to a very upscale shopping mall. The mall had Gucci, Prada, Marc Jacob's, etc. A helpful doorman who we asked for directions walked us to an exit and gave us directions; turned out to be the wrong exit and incorrect directions but eventually we found the hotel, which was very nice. It had something I'd never seen before, in addition to the usual toiletries in the bathroom there was a condom.

We rested, showered, and changed after our long train ride and then went to lunch. It took a while to find a place acceptable to everyone. Our first try, some sort of cafeteria, had too few vegetarian and non-pork options. We eventually settled on a small restaurant where we had noodles, fried rice, and a build your own vegetable soup. It was delicious but I'm sure that there was 5 grams of sodium in my meal. Lunch for 7 cost 40 Yuan ($6US). Admittedly, the kids ate little but it was still a bargain.

Donna had a fancy birthday cake delivered to the hotel for Zachary and after lunch we sang happy birthday, gave him the one small  present we had brought from the U. S, and had the cake. It had a candy dog on it because he was born in the year of the dog. Ari was tickled that he'd be able to say that he had eaten dog in China.

After lunch we went to look for a toy store so that Zachary could choose a birthday present. It was a travesty. We started in a fancy shopping district, which had ice cream that cost more than lunch. It had cute little brick pedestrian streets with interesting art on the walls and upscale shops but no toy store. So we used Google maps and navigated to a toy store that wasn't there. We set of again. After what seemed like a ten mile hike in 95 degree heat we found a small toy store. Zachary bought a knock off Lego set. Even Zachary had been ready to give up and wait until another day but Andrea was dead set on getting him a gift and the difficulty of China is no match for her strong will.

We returned to the fancy shopping district, watched street performers, took some pictures with Chinese natives that wanted a photo with real white people, and found a restaurant that turned out to be too expensive. Before we could leave, Ray knocked a really hot cup of tea into Zachary's lap. After applying ice we moved to a restaurant where we could keep the cost to about $7/person if we were careful about what we ordered and had BiBimBop for dinner.  Zachary and Ari had beef pizza. We supplemented with a bit of street food: fried potato on a stick (and fried squid for Ray) and some green tea sesame buns for me and Andrea.

After dinner we returned to the fancy restaurant to see a performance, sort of Szechuan vaudeville. The costumes were great, some of the skits amusing, and the mask changing, where the performers change masks nearly instantly was really cool.

On the way home the kids got donuts and I got a frozen yogurt, which was literally a container of yogurt poured onto a cold metal plate and frozen on the spot. They added mango, mixed it up, scraped the yogurt off of the cold surface and put it in a cup. It was delicious.

We got an early night because tomorrow we're headed to see the pandas and we want to get there while they are still active. Often in the heat the Pandas head inside for an early siesta. I don't blame them.