Jan and I woke up a bit late, so we missed the actual breakfast buffet (which was part of the cost of the room). Luckily they still had some food and made up some plates of noodles and some watermelon for us. They also gave us some fresh croissants, which were delicious!
After breakfast we walked down to Jan’s school and around her neighbourhood. I got the grand tour of the school and her classroom, which had projects the kids had done on the walls. After visiting the school, we went to A-best, which is like a 3 story Walmart. I picked up some Kleenex with Tigger on the packages (of course), some bottled water and some throat lozenges. I was going to buy a throat spray as well, but it seemed expensive. I was really indecisive though because I woke up in the morning with a tell-tale white bubble in my throat (the beginning of strep).
We wandered over to Jan’s apartment so she could pick up some more things, and Jan’s apartment really is cold! The floors are all tiled which doesn’t help much – that seems to make it even colder. I totally understand why she wants to hang out at the hotel!
On the way back home I went back to A-best and picked up the throat spray. I figured I should do something – while expensive, it was better than leaving it. The spray was ionic silver. Now, I was totally skeptical about this stuff but figured it was some fandangled Chinese medicine despite the American flag on the box. As it turns out, this stuff has been around for a century and apparently kills pretty much any germ, including strep. Wow! A miracle drug LOL As it was discovered before patent laws, no one can patent it (and therefore make money off of it) so this is supposedly why the drug companies haven’t developed this more. (Side note: While slow acting this stuff actually did work. It took several days, but eventually I was all better. I think it would have worked faster except I wasn’t letting it sit long enough in my throat before drinking something.)
After a quick stop in the park (where people were flying kites) on the way back to the hotel, I went to bed while Jan watched the episodes of Amazing Race I had brought her. While not an overly exciting day, I think at that point I just needed the rest. We were supposed to go to a party at Jan’s apartment being held by her housemate, but I begged out cuz I wasn’t feeling up to it. Jan ended up staying with me and just hanging out while I slept.
By the time I got up and ready for dinner, nothing was open. We didn’t want to go back up to the 27th floor restaurant because they didn’t seem to have much food, but that was the only one that was open. So we ended up there, and half the menu was unavailable! This is the first time I felt like I was in a communist country. Until this point, it seemed fairly capitalistic to me. We finally found some food items that were available, including a ceasar salad that would take 20 minutes to make for some reason. Of course twenty minutes later they came to the table explaining, sorry we don’t have ceasar salad. Ummm, ok. Why not just tell us right at the beginning? Kind of weird. Maybe they had to run across he street to another restaurant to get the food, and they were out of the ceasar salad LOL.
We ended up with these huge salads (much bigger than expected). We had ordered one of each – fruit, tuna and vegetable. The salads came heaped on dinner plates. I was expecting more of a small bowl, so it was a bit of a surprise to get so much food. I also ordered the pork chop and onion soup. The onion soup was something resembling onion soup, but was weird. The pork chop was breaded and then put on top of rice with a cream sauce on top. It was only ok. The salads were delicious though. I should have just stuck with them LOL.
After dinner, we (Cal, Jan and I) wandered up to the wine and cigar bag on the top floor of the hotel. It was quite cold (isn’t everywhere in China?) but they let us move into the cigar bar area which seemed to be a bit heated. No one was actually in there, so it was nice.
The entire place was decorated with leather couches, brocade carpets and men-like stuff on the walls. There was even a picture of Winston Churchill, smoking a cigar obviously. What was really amusing was the magazine collection which included things like women’s fashion magazines for some reason.
We all sat and enjoyed relaxing with a bottle of Dynasty wine. I figured we had to get that just for the name. It wasn’t that bad actually. I often get headaches with red wine (from the tannin), and this one didn’t give me one, so it was good.
At midnight, we heard banging noises and went to the window and saw lots of fireworks going off. That was a nice surprise. That went on for a few minutes and then we called it a night and went back to our rooms to bed!
Not an entirely exciting New Year’s Eve, but relaxing. I figure New Year’s is overrated anyway. There is always all this hype, but never that much excitement.
To see all my photos from this day, visit my photoblog!
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