Saturday, October 30, 2010

fantastic weekend with visitors

We have been so consumed with writing about our trip that we haven't written about Courtney and Stacy's last few days in Beijing! It was a lot of fun for Adam and me to experience new parts of the city with our visitors.

We went to Wanfujing Snack Street and ate a delicious dinner of insects, 
scorpions,
snake, 
and pigeon kebabs.
Ok, so that was a total lie...except for the snake part, which Adam is eating in the picture above. You know me: I would rather starve than eat SNAKE. Courtney, however, was brave enough to try it:
We had a few other, more appealing, snacks and took lots of pictures of the "kebabs." We also enjoyed a standard Beijing treat: sugar-coated fruit. Delicious!

On Saturday morning, we met Sarah in old town Beijing. We went to an organization called The Hutong to take a dumpling cooking class. It was fantastic! There were about 12 of us altogether--5 Frenchies, 2 Brits, and us. We each had our own cooking station and shared the ingredients. We had a great time using carrot and spinach juice to color the dumplings, trying to figure out how to actually roll out and shape them, and of course eating!! We have the recipe, so be prepared for dumpling parties when return stateside!
Courtney and her mixed veggie ingredients.

Colored hands!
Of course we were the messiest :)

We rolled out of the class and onto the subway to the Olympic Green. The Olympic area has its own subway line, which is why Adam was able to do this on the train:
Absolutely the least crowded subway in all of Beijing; it was wonderful! Upon stepping off the train, we were in the middle of an open area with the Birds Nest stadium on one side and the Water Cube on the other. After all of 3 minutes, I decided this was my favorite part of Beijing thus far; not jam-packed, awesome buildings (did anyone else DVR 8 hours of Olympics a day, or just me and Lindsay...?), and lots of green! We took a bunch of pictures (big surprise):
Swimming at the Water Cube
WE MADE IT TO THE BIRD'S NEST!!
Anyone else notice the Olympic rings?
We ended the day with a yummy dinner at DaDong Roast Duck, a place all visitors will try (hint hint!). A great few days sightseeing in Beijing :)

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