Hong Kong to Guangzhou

Day 2
We went to a traditional Chinese place for breakfast. I had a fish cake and fish ball soup with noodles. It was delicious.

Then we went to the top of Victoria Hill on the tram. An impressive mountain climb that made the buildings look like they leaned because the angle was so steep.

We took a quick tour of Hong Kong on a double decker bus. Then went to the train station to get the train to Guangzhou.  Joshua complained bitterly about the lack of time in Hong Kong. We ate in the train's dining car.  A vegetable dish, that was mostly celery, carrots, and mushroom,  beef with carrot in a spicy sauce, and chicken. We were all stuffed by the end of the meal but Joshua ate some Japanese snacks he'd bought in the station; Japanese salad flavored pretzels.

Once in Guangzhou we cleared immigration and were meet by Li  Feng's friend Yan. The seven of us piled into her van and headed to dinner.  Guangzhou is freaky impressive with modern buildings and cool lights everywhere.  The population is about 6 million.  Traffic was horrific.

We arrived at a restaurant named Sky No 1, were let in to a private parking lot, were greeted warmly by a hosts who rode the elevator up to the restaurant on the 28th floor with us where we found ourselves in a huge room with white tablecloths and fancy place settings. In our t-shirts we were definitely undressed. Yan spoke to the waitress in Chinese and we soon turned around, Yan explained that it was not fancy enough, which I took to be humor.  We were guided back onto the elevator for the journey up a floor to the private rooms.

I've been to some fancy restaurants in my life but nothing like this.  I'll try to do it justice. The room was about 20 feet wide and 40 long. Half was a set of comfortable chairs with side tables and the other half held a long table set for six. The decor included a huge modern chandelier, oil paintings, a wall with contoured golden mirror tiles,  and two walls of windows that overlooked the river and the city. The view included the Canton tower,  the tallest structure in China. We were blown away. I was handed a tea menu,  20 pages of tea with descriptions in Chinese and English and asked to choose.  I plead ignorance. Yan ordered chrysanthemum tea and oolong. As we drank one waitress refilled our cups and another brought menus.  The was a seafood menu, a seasonal menu, a regular menu,  a specialties menu, and more.  We let Yan order for us all.

She ordered stir fried vegetables with pepper, at Joshua's request, beef, a pumpkin and taro stew, squid ink noodles, soup, tapioca with honeydew, date jellies, pumpkin custard in flaky pastry.  Between us we managed to eat half of it.

During the meal Zachary spoke to the waitress in Chinese. I asked what he said to her and he told me that he had asked for a glass of cold water and explained that the tea too hot for him. I was really impressed.

Once we finished and took pictures we went to the Guangzhou Opera house to see a traditional Chinese musical. The opera house was huge and architecturally fascinating.  Joshua thought that it looked like the work of Zaha Hadid but I thought it looked too flowing and organic for that.  Our hosts said that they thought Joshua was right.  The performance started with loud drums and acrobats.  The actors danced and sang. The audience was unruly and they down them out with sound. Nevertheless, jet lag overtook me and I found myself fighting to stay awake.

We checked in to the hotel. I love a firm bed.  In fact I often sleep on the floor of I'm tossing and turning to make sure that I don't wake Andrea,  if Andrea is making too much noise in her sleep or tossing too much, if Zachary is having nightmares and wants a parent to sleep next to his bed. This is the firmest I have ever had; a quilt over a wooden box.  I wish I could get one in the US. I passed out around 11. At four I woke up and lay in bed until around six when I got up and wrote this entry.