Friday, December 3

Note: Sorry for the long delay, I cannot access the blogsites outside of work. They are blocked.

Friday was an uneventful day at work other that Winson informing me that he hurt his back a bit last night during his badmitton. For lunch we went to the spicey restaurant just down the street that I had frequented on all of my other visits. There, we had boiled fish in a bowl of broth, green beans, and a great mushroom plate picked out by yours truely. The fish bowl is a staple here, as it seems every restaurant serves it. My only real complaint is the number of bones hidden in the fish - you have to be very careful when eating them. The mushroom plate looked exacly like a plate of calamari - complete with the light batter and onion. Very delicious - one of my favorite food items on all of my Dalian trip. I will be sure to return and snap a photo. Winson ended up taking the afternoon off as sick time so he could rest his back. finished up with work around 5pm and headed back to the hotel. Since Winson was still not up for dinner, he volenteered his girlfriend Anna to join me for dinner. I knew her from my previous Dalian trip in January and thought it would be fun, as well as a bit of a challenge, since she is not nearly as fluent at English as Winson.

Anna met me at the hotel at 6:00pm and we went outside to catch a taxi for the 1 mile ride to the restaurant (a Korean BBQ). Unfortunately, at 6:00pm on a Friday, taxis are hard to come by, not because there wasn't enough of them, just that none were interested in taking us only 1 mile away. I went back in the hotel and had an attendant flag us down a taxi - which actually worked. A short ride later had us at the Korean BBQ. I have actually never tried one, but have enjoyed Koren food a number of times before in my work travels. The restaurant was fairly fancy and crowded. The women workers had large elaborate dresses on and let us upstairs to our table (downstairs was full - maybe 100 tables). Once we sat down, we ordered our dinner. A selection of then steaks, 2 large prawns, and what looked like a whole smoked fish. Another lady came out and setup the BBQ in our table. It consisted of a small 1' diameter depression in the table filled with coals and covered by a metal grill. There she placed the steaks and cooked them for us. She cut them into bite sized pieces and served them ona piece of slightly bitter lettuce (I am sure there is a special name for the leaf, but I will just refer to it as the lettuce). You could also add some peppers and potato? to the wrap. Additionally, I would dip my steak pieces in a seasoning dish before wrapping them up in the lettuce. The meal was tasty, but very filling - it seems she was cooking pieces of steak continusly for 30 minutes. Finally, she cooked up the whole prawns. Those were definately my favorite, as the tasted exactly like lobster. The fish was also good, was a consistency slightly drier than sardinees, and nothing special to report on the flavor. After paying, I was taken to a spinning wheel in the restaurant lobby where I was told to spin for a prize. As the gasps from the audience got my attention, Anna informed me that I just won the grand prize. The spinner ended up dead center on a tinly wedge of the circle - that also told me I did something good. The prize was a certificate for "LA beef" - the most expensive meat plate available there. I believe that it was about $30 or so.

Leaving the restaurant Anna told me that Winson would be treating us to a couple of drinks at a bar with live music. As it turned out, this was the same bar I had gone to on my first trip to Dalian. I did not catch the name of it, but did note that it was only about 3 blocks east of the Swishhotel. Entering the building we were lead downstairs to the bar area. The room was quite large, with table seating for about 200 or so and a large central bar that formed a rough circle. I am not much of an expert on decorations, but will describe it as having alot of dark woods and beams. In the corner was a small stage were the musicians soon arrived. 2 base players, 1 drummer, a pianist, 1 saxaphone playerr, and a lady singer. I actually recognized some of them from a couple of years ago. They sang mostly American songs with a jazz beat. Even played "All of Me" and threw in a jazzy rendition of "take me Home Country Roads" if you can believe that.. I had a small Captain and Coke's, while Anna had a Gin and Tonic and a Beer. By 10 pm, we called it a night and Anna had the taxi drop me off at the hotel.