Anything worth seeing in China has a rock.
There were a lot more people around than last night. The Chinese garden had some people singing and playing erhu (the traditional Chinese instrument), and there was a large group of people gathered for some sort of ceremony - neither of us knew what it was. We walked up past the people feeding pidgeons and towards the soccer ball.
Bending it like Beckham
Near the ball, you can take a chair lift up the hill to the tower. This offers some nice views of the park, and the surrounding area. It goes over a road, which is protected by a confidence-inspiring net.
The top of the chairlift was still a short walk away from the tower, but the view from the hill was nice. The park was on one side, and a small European-style housing development was under construction on the other.
Dalian!
The tower was much like the other Chinese TV towers I've been in - except we were the only ones in it. Metal poles obstruct the view in parts but what you can see is nice.
Hills to the west.
I did see something interesting - which was either an unladen container ship, or the Varyag, which is an aircraft carrier visible on Google Maps (see Wikipedia). If it was the Varyag, it would've been moved since the Google picture was taken, which is unlikely.
What do you think?
Coming down the hill we got some more good photos.
We left the park (after shooting some balloons with a BB gun of course) and went back towards Shengli Square. It was getting to lunchtime now, so we walked to Youhao Square to eat at the oddly-housed KFC.
Chinese KFC is significantly different from that in Australia, but I've probably talked about that enough already. No crab claws at this one anyway. After lunch, we took a bus to the other beach, near Xinghai Square.
The other beach.
This beach had a few more people on it than Tiger Beach, but was still quite cold and windy. There were some stalls selling things made of shells, and there was a big dome aviary for pidgeons. Some of the pidgeons were outside walking around, and Leslie thought it was lovely.
She likes pidgeons? She did the same thing at Laodong park.
We then realised Xinghai Square wasn't all that close, and took a bus there. It's pretty big. So big that it took us a while to find a way in. Around the circumference there are sculptures based on sports - apparently the football in the 2008 Olympics was held here.
I took the opportunity to go skiing.
It is definitely larger than Tiananmen Square. It is oval-shaped, intersected by roads. In the centre is a large stele, 1997cm tall, to mark the year of Hong Kong's return to China. This is ringed by the signs of the Chinese zodiac engraved in stone.
I'm a dragon. The years are written as well, in case you don't know.
Looking back towards the city.
There is another waterfront here - all concrete. It feels as if it should have expensive seafood restaurants all along it, but it doesn't - just some hotels and a closed beer garden. Again, this place probably livens up a lot in the summer.
With the tourist bus along the coast not running (as a bus driver retorted, "why would anyone travel here in winter?") we took a normal city bus back, through the centre of the city. Along this route you can see Renmin (People's) Square, and Olympic Square. They were just squares, and I think we'd already seen enough. So, we went back to the hotel where we'd left our baggage, shared our photos, and had an early dinner. We wandered around the shopping centre under Shengli Square for a bit, then Leslie had to go to the airport. I then had a couple of hours to wait until my train left, so I spent the time sitting in the centre writing about my experience, until the centre closed and I was kicked out at 8:30. So I went to the train station with another hour to wait. This was not as bad as I envisioned, but less pleasant than Beijing, it was like a typical crowded Chinese airport departure lounge. I didn't really get to know the people around me on the train, just went straight to bed.
I forgot to mention previously, I was originally going to catch a train which would get me to Beijing around 6am. Those tickets were sold out by the time I got to Dalian, so I had to take a later train, getting me to Beijing at 8:30am. As such, I made it to class at 10 (the train station is on the opposite side of Beijing from my university). I missed my oral Chinese class, but I think my weekend made up for it.
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