Sunday, January 17 – Winson Tour of Dalian

The day started off with me waking up around 7:00am and heading down for my breakfast around 8:30. I again was met w/ Kenny G – starting to get a bit old. Had my normal breakfast of orange, apple, and tomato juice. I also had my standard frosted flakes and a cup of yogurt.At 10:00am Winson picked me up at my hotel (Swisshotel) to begin our tour (NEW FEATURE ALERT - Click on that Swisshotel link into your browser to see where I was - Once in google maps, you can switch between satellite and map view - give it a try). We first headed east to a local market- misc. shopping and lots of fish, fruits, and nuts. From there, a short but cold walk over to a park (Dalian Botanical Garden). Nice little set of rolling hills and well groomed plantings. I was told it is quite spectacular in the spring/summer. Nestled in the middle, away from the noise of the city, was a small lake frozen over covered with people skating. Hiked up the trail to the back part of the park and saw exercise classes going on. We walked a couple of blocks over to another park (called Children’s Park) along a wide frozen river with more skaters.

From there, we hopped on a taxi and headed over to a Korean town where we ate at, you guessed it, a Korean restaurant. It was a small little local place where we had the standard Korean appetizers which consisted of about a dozen different small bowls of food – spiced cabbage, salted minnows, some different pickled vegetables, sprouts, etc - all very delicious – Korean food is definitely one of my favorites. Winson ordered for me a picked out a seafood soup. It was ok – but I really love the appetizers – which we continued to eat throughout or meal. The lunch for the two of us came to 60RMB (~$10). From there, we took a 100 year old electric trolley to the east toward the coast. Most of the trolleys are very modern and new, but we waited extra to get one of the old ones. They were original on the outside and restored very nicely on the inside. The ride smoothness was similar to a wooden roller-coaster – very cool. The old brass manual controls were effortlessly handled by the driver. One brief delay as a taxi had crashed trying to do a u-turn and blocked our path. After a couple of minutes, the car was moved and we were back on our way. Once we reached the end of the line for the trolley, another taxi ride to the east brought us to the fanciest resort in Dalian - Banchuidao.

It was a sprawling golf course/resort on the rugged and rocky Eastern Coastline of Dalian. The actual property was solidly gated off, but we had many beautiful views into it (I took a bunch of photos – still figuring out the best way to post). Along the Binhai East Road, we followed a newly constructed wooden deck sidewalk about 2.5 miles up and down valleys along the coast where we were consistently 100 – 300 feet above the rocky coast. The air temperature was about 35 and luckily sunny with no wind. After a couple of hours we wrapped around the southern-most point in Dalian and were nearing civilization (Binhai Golf Driving Range on the google map).

From there, we took a 30 minute taxi ride along the coast and then headed over to taxi over to Olympic Park to check out the underground Wal-Mart (PACKED!) and the Circuit City store I visited on my previous visits. We took a taxi back to the hotel where checked out a great food market that I never knew was next to the hotel. We talked a bit of flight simulator (as Winson is admitted flight simmer) and then headed over near Xinghai Square () for a seafood dinner. Since it was rush hour, we took a bus (1 RMB ea.). We dined at a fancier restaurant where we picked out our dinners – a couple of flying crabs (expensive – 188RMB ea. - as the season is now over), jellyfish, oysters, and shrimp. Delicious. There was absolutely outstanding egg rho in the crab – firmer than regular crab meat, but tastes infused with rich flavor – wow. I believe the total was about $60 or so. He flagged down a taxi for me and I got back to the hotel around 8:00pm.
What a day.