We have been in Dalian for a little over a month and here are some of my thoughts so far...
Living in a country that is roughly the same size as the US and has over 1,000,000,000 more people, you quickly discover that there is always a crowd.
Here is a photo at Olympic Square. You can find Walmart, McDonalds, a huge electronic market, several soccer fields, and a lot of people.
Dalian is a “medium city” with about 7 million people living here (more than the entire state of Arizona) and I am pretty sure that all of them are where we want to go on the weekends.
We have been successful in finding places to eat that we are accustomed to like:
McDonalds – We have only been there once, it tastes the same.
Pizza Hut – We have not eaten there, but they do have “clean” bathrooms that the girls will go into.
Subway – Either it is better than in the US, or I was REALLY hungry that day.
KFC – The Chinese LOVE this place.
Dairy Queen – Hey Shoes, ask Louis if he can transfer you to the An Sheng DQ…you can move here and get a job! A medium Blizzard™ is only $2.30US.
We have started to get more adventurous and try some local places to eat. On Friday we went out to eat with two other families at a really nice place called the Modern Coarse Grain Restaurant. Before we went up to our private room the wives ordered dinner by going to a section of the restaurant where the chefs have prepared uncooked plates of all of the choices for the day and you simply point and tell them how many you want. In most places in China you eat “family style” meaning that you order a dish and the entire table eats from it. They also had several aquariums with live creatures including fish, octopus, shrimp, crab, and turtles that you can pick from as well…you can’t get any fresher than that! We had a lot of great dishes (some new to us) and we all walked away full. The bill for the 15 of us came to about $3US per person.
If you are seeking even more "adventure" there are street vendors selling items ranging from rotisserie duck…
Here are the girls next to a local place selling ducks. From what I can tell you can get a whole cooked duck for about $2US (neck and head are included).
…to people cooking skewers of meat - beef, chicken, pork, lamb, shrimp, or squid. We had a BBQ at work a few weeks ago that featured the above items and I have to say that it was one of the best BBQs I have ever had (including the squid)!
Another place where locals get food is the street vegetable markets. This is where you will find the freshest and best priced items (and weirdest smells).
On this visit to the market we purchased green onions, lettuce, garlic, cucumbers, and tomatoes. We bought about 2 pounds of large ripe tomatoes for about 45 cents US.
I will leave you with this funny part of our China experience. We are often amazed at signs that are misspelled or how they are labeled. Here are a few that we ran into in the past two weeks:
You would think that a place owned by Walmart could afford to hire someone that knew how to spell chicken (this was spotted by Emma).
This ride was spotted in Xinghai Square (supposed to say Viking).
We spotted this cake at a local bakery. With Emma's "bithday" coming up, I wonder if I can point out the mistake and get a discount!?!
1 comment:
We ate at that Subway yesterday!
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