Day Twelve: At the seaside and Goodbye to Dalian via our cruise.

On Friday morning we went to breakfast with Wen Wen.
Unfortunately I'm not that adventuresome: I had zhou (porridge).
Then the 3 of us decide to go out to the seaside for the day. We took a 45 min. light rail ride way out of town and ended up in this area of Dalian that is like part tourist resort beach town, part suburbia (something I'd never seen there before) and part farm landish.
We first went into this little government tourism building where they had this picture on the wall.
If you can't tell what it is that's because it's UPSIDE DOWN!
They also had another Tatanka look-a-like hanging out in the front.
And check this out: You can get a two-for-one combo of the San Francisco bridges in Dalian- That's The Golden Bay Bridge! And me in front of the Golden Bay Bridge.
Here, I'm not sure if two negatives make a positive or if it's something else entirely. . .

Anyway, we mainly just hung around the beach for quite a while.
Gordon is doing the perfect Chinese pose here with the "V" for Victory fingers.
It was fairly cold, and being as it's typically a vacation area, there weren't many people around aside from a lot of local fishermen, both on land and boat. But we had a really nice time just walking around. Wen Wen picked seashells and Gordon took a little nap, and I took a lot of pictures.


Wen Wen picking shells
The 3 of us are reflected in the corner of that building there. I especially liked these three boats and took quite a few of them


After hanging out there for a little while we rented some bikes and rode to this Martial Arts school that we saw on our way in a few miles back.
This was an interesting place. It's huge and I guess kids that show some potential are sent off to this special school. They were nice enough to let us come in for a while and watch them practice.
Just during the few previous days this place had hosted some sort of national championships but sadly we missed it.
This little kid was like a Houdini and showed us how he could get out of this rope knotted a million times around his wrists.
Then they let me try. I didn't succeed.

So then we rode our bikes back to the beach. Luckily this was a very scarcely populated area because I don't know that I would have been able to handle the regular city traffic driving.
We passed this man who was riding on a cart being pulled by a donkey via the highway while on his cell phone.
I took a few more pictures of the area before leaving.
Then right after the sun set we headed back into the city.

By this time Wang Yan had done everything she needed to do in Dalian so it was time to go to RiZhao next. That is in ShanDong Province where her and Wen Wen are opening yet another school. So after getting back into the city we had a little bit of time before our boat left later that night for Yantai (a port in Shandong). We used this time to get a Blizzard!
I'm usually strongly against eating American food while in other countries, but I don't even have Dairy Queens in San Francisco so I told myself it was acceptable. It was really yummy.
Then it was one more public shower and then off to the boat dock.

We were anxious to see whether we were going to be on Princess Cruises or Royal Caribbean, but as it turns out we were traveling with a company I had never heard of. Gordon had recently been on a cruise with her friends so she knew all about them and took me around the ship to find some of the cool stuff. First we slipped on this wet floor and concluded that must lead out to the pool deck area.
We were looking for the activity room. But only found this area with brightly-colored posters.
I think maybe the games came later in the evening. But we were lucky enough to run in to one of the performers from one of the shows offered on board.
Gordon says that there is always a mandatory safety meeting the first day. Oddly, we must have missed it, but were able to get up to date from these wall-hangings.
I have to tell you the truth and say that I was a little disappointed with the talked-up all-you-can-eat buffet.
So we went up on deck to wave goodbye to the land people and see what sort of activities were going on outside. Turns out I think we were the only entertainment there was.
After a group of young and slightly intoxicated kids saw us taking a picture, one of them dared one of the others to go take a picture with us, and in the process I think fell in love with Gordon. He immediately drew a whole crowd in to watch her after he asked her to sing "Yesterday once more" in English.
It quickly became a sing-a-long with about 20 people crowded around her.
I snuck away to take some pictures.
Sadly, this bit of travel was only like 6 hours. This was unfortunate because these were the most comfortable beds we slept in the entire trip and we had to be out of them by like 5 in the morning when we arrived in Yantai. Here's the four of us in our room.