Sunday, March 25 - Finally a real adventure...

On Sunday morning, I awoke around 8:00am after an ok nights sleep (I was up for a bit around 3 and 6 am), got ready and had another nice breakfast in the hotel (by the way, here it is on google maps). I arranged to spend the day with my friend Winson (who I work with at Rockwell - Dalian). So, I had him on the cell phone as I climbed into a taxi in front of the hotel. Handing the phone to the driver, he instructed him as to the destination. It ended up being the Dalian Forest Zoo (again, here it is on google maps). What is neat about that, is the zoo is located in the mountainous area on the South side of the city near the coast. I remember driving by it in a taxi over a year ago, and always wanted to take the gondola up the mountain. I met Winson there around 9:30am, where he informed me the gondolas do not operate yet this year and we would be setting the top of the tallest mountain there as our goal for a hike today. Queue music - DUN DUN DAAAAA. Holy crap - I wasn't sure I was up for it, but I thought I better give it a good try. Before you picture me attempting to climb Mt. Everest (37,000), I should tell you that this mountain, although the tallest in Dalian, stands a more modest 300m (1000 ft.). That being said, let's see you get fired up about climbing 100 stories - in 40 degrees and wind. We started on a long trail through a valley and walked by some small zoo exhibits - snow leopard's, monkey's etc before seeing the road that wound its way up the mountain. Winson, couldn't find a walking trail, so we walked on the road up probably 200 vertical feet - over about 1/5 of a mile when we reached a parking lot. From there, we found a paved walking trail that led us up the winding path to the summit. It was very scenic and after about an hour and a half, we reached the top. I took a bunch of pictures to capture the views (and, admittedly, to capture some rest time as well). At the top, it was quite windy (> 35mph) but it offered an absolutely fantastic 360 degree panorama of the city. It was actually worth the effort, and probably the most enjoyable thing I have done in my now 4 visits to Dalian.

After strategically talking quite a while on top, we proceeded to walk down the road on the other side to head near the coast and XingHai Square. The place of my very first tourist stop in Dalian on my first visit. You may remember that large book? Anyway, the walk down was less strenuous, except for my calves - I was really hoping they didn't lock up on me as Winson would not have been able to carry me - good thing I preemptively took an Alieve this morning, as I knew that Winson likes to walk! After about an hour of descending, we proceeded to follow the road towards XingHai square in the hopes of finding a taxi. Unfortunately for me, that walk went another 2 miles or so to the opposite side of the square where we were finally able to flag down a taxi. I cannot tell you good it felt to sit down in the taxi - I savored all 10 minutes of the ride to a restaurant, which was located somewhat near Olympic Park. The restaurant Winson chose was a nice Japanese one where I enjoyed one of my favorite foods - Sea Urchin for the first time on my previous visit.
Now around 2:00pm, Winson ordered our food - sashimi, something similar to sardines, liver, and, of course, many plates of raw sea urchin. In the back of my head, I remember telling myself to stay away from the raw seafood here (eg. two different incidents of 8 hours of puking each), however, I had eaten all of this before at this very same restaurant and never got sick from here - so, why not. We also split a bottle of a tasty Japanese wine and enjoyed our lunch and discussions over about a 2 1/2 hour period. After finishing lunch, I grabbed a taxi back to the hotel and fell asleep for about 1 1/2 hours. The rest of the evening was quiet, and I worked on these blogs and relaxed.