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So much walking!
We started with some tech purchases and a quick recon of the area - mum bought a iPhone case with some serious bling (a jewelled peacock) for a friend, and I bought some fairly cheap tech - a USB hub and a USB drive.
Brunch was a restaurant where the dishes were good...except for the soup noodles I ordered, which tasted muddy. Or like someone had dipped a washcloth in the soup. Not a nice taste, let me tell you!
We walked up to People's Square which seems to be a bit of a museum and shopping district. Some of the architecture in this area was very odd - what looks like a square dish on top of a squat rectangular building; a skyscraper whose body splits into four towers that come to a close-but-not-quite point at the top and centre; a flying saucer on top of a skyscraper - the Radisson hotel.
Dinner was at a dumpling house somewhere in the East Nanjing Rd area with the stepbro, SIL, her mother and her bestie. But we'd been walking up and down Nanjing Rd for a long time before that - with a brief stop in at the Royal Plaza hotel for a drink and some internet access. :D
Nanjing Rd is a major department store/shopping district in Beijing - kind of like Sydney's Pitt St Mall for the handful of Sydneysiders reading this. My mother's family usd to own a department store in Nanjing Rd before the Cultural Revolution, and mum went and got photos in front of the buildings...which still house department stores, although obviously not owned by the family since everyone on that part of the family tree got the hell out of China when the revolution happened. (They would have been branded Japanese sympathisers since they were running the store in Shanghai during the Japanese occupation.)
The dumpling house we went to for dinner was a teeny-tiny hole-in-the-wall place where you order your meal, sit down at a table with strangers, eat it, and head out. The dumplings were very nice, although the dough was a little thick. Still, tasty dumplings!
And then we walked up and down this street market where people sold us candied nuts and dried persimmons, and were trying to sell us pickled eels and...all kinds of other things which I can't remember.
It was fascinating. Although my feet were very sore by the end of it.
The parentals are being fairly typical as parents. Mum organises everything to the nth degree, which is fine...only tiring when you're walking all over town so we can try to see/do everything. And stepdad gets 'cross' and calls everything 'silly' or 'stupid' when it doesn't work as he expects the first time. I put 'cross' in inverted commas, because he gets short and terse, although I don't know that I'd call it 'angry'. Irritated, perhaps?
I love them, but they're somewhat exasperating. A lot of things would resolve themselves if they weren't so fixated on doing it their way the first time. Or if they stopped to think before they plunged on into whatever's going on.
Ah well. We're surviving. I'm surviving!
We started with some tech purchases and a quick recon of the area - mum bought a iPhone case with some serious bling (a jewelled peacock) for a friend, and I bought some fairly cheap tech - a USB hub and a USB drive.
Brunch was a restaurant where the dishes were good...except for the soup noodles I ordered, which tasted muddy. Or like someone had dipped a washcloth in the soup. Not a nice taste, let me tell you!
We walked up to People's Square which seems to be a bit of a museum and shopping district. Some of the architecture in this area was very odd - what looks like a square dish on top of a squat rectangular building; a skyscraper whose body splits into four towers that come to a close-but-not-quite point at the top and centre; a flying saucer on top of a skyscraper - the Radisson hotel.
Dinner was at a dumpling house somewhere in the East Nanjing Rd area with the stepbro, SIL, her mother and her bestie. But we'd been walking up and down Nanjing Rd for a long time before that - with a brief stop in at the Royal Plaza hotel for a drink and some internet access. :D
Nanjing Rd is a major department store/shopping district in Beijing - kind of like Sydney's Pitt St Mall for the handful of Sydneysiders reading this. My mother's family usd to own a department store in Nanjing Rd before the Cultural Revolution, and mum went and got photos in front of the buildings...which still house department stores, although obviously not owned by the family since everyone on that part of the family tree got the hell out of China when the revolution happened. (They would have been branded Japanese sympathisers since they were running the store in Shanghai during the Japanese occupation.)
The dumpling house we went to for dinner was a teeny-tiny hole-in-the-wall place where you order your meal, sit down at a table with strangers, eat it, and head out. The dumplings were very nice, although the dough was a little thick. Still, tasty dumplings!
And then we walked up and down this street market where people sold us candied nuts and dried persimmons, and were trying to sell us pickled eels and...all kinds of other things which I can't remember.
It was fascinating. Although my feet were very sore by the end of it.
The parentals are being fairly typical as parents. Mum organises everything to the nth degree, which is fine...only tiring when you're walking all over town so we can try to see/do everything. And stepdad gets 'cross' and calls everything 'silly' or 'stupid' when it doesn't work as he expects the first time. I put 'cross' in inverted commas, because he gets short and terse, although I don't know that I'd call it 'angry'. Irritated, perhaps?
I love them, but they're somewhat exasperating. A lot of things would resolve themselves if they weren't so fixated on doing it their way the first time. Or if they stopped to think before they plunged on into whatever's going on.
Ah well. We're surviving. I'm surviving!
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