ByGD
The Chinese are famous for flowery names, but this beach is actually named Number One Bathing Beach. There are five swimming beaches in Qingdao, and each one has it’s own look and personality. Although this is the biggest and sandiest and most popular, it’s named Number One because they’re numbered North to South. I think this one looks like a postcard from the 1970’s.
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Some people travel the world to look at birds. I’ve never paid them much attention. But our hotel in Qingdao was set in the middle of a private park, and I couldn’t help but notice these birds. They’re like crows, but extra.
ByGD
In Qingdao, my daughter and I stayed at the Castle Hotel, a European-style hotel that (in theory) catered to foreigners. (In practice, we saw maybe three other Western visitors while we were there.)
Although I thought this one was a fairly typical example of the Asian hotel breakfast (a mixture of Chinese, Continental, and English breakfast foods), my daughter was new to the concept of the hotel breakfast buffet. She loved that she could have eggs and sausage and shrimp with the heads still on and Chinese pork buns for breakfast. Plus there was cake! For breakfast! And I let her eat it! (Because I’m a cheapskate who was counting on the free breakfast to carry us all the way to dinner.)
It immediately became her favorite thing about our trip, and she still talks about it to this day. I on the other hand, thought the best thing about our hotel dining room was Astro Turf wallpaper.
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When I was in Qingdao, China with my daughter, we got lost a lot. Maybe because we navigated by the strange Ghibli-faced monsters that rose above us on a hill. Eventually, we made our way to that hillside, and discovered that they were towers you could enter, like the Space Needle except shorter, to get a view of the city. Except the glass was dirty and there was no air conditioning. Anyway, here is the view from the top.
(By the way, I keep referring to these as Ghibli towers, but there is no actual connection between the Japanese animation studio and these buildings in Qingdao. They just look to my eye like something Hayao Miyazake would design.)
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Taxis in Qingdao were unlike those in any other country I’ve ever been. Cab drivers avoided the hassle of dealing with foreigners. Sometimes a dozen cabs would drive right by us before would stop. Then, half the time they would refuse our fare when they found out where we wanted to go. I would show them the card with the address of our destination on it, and they would shake their heads. They all had GPS, but were rarely willing to leave the neighborhood. I asked Lily, the hotel clerk where we were staying, about it, and she said, “I know right! Qingdao taxis are so strange!”
None of that affected my daughter very much. She just loved that the taxis had video games in the seat backs, like on a airplane.