I haven't been in Dalian this entire time, although it may seem so. I haven't had time to blog ever since that last post, but I might as well catch everyone up on the rest of the trip now.




The boat to Tianjin had fairly comfy cabins, with two bunk beds on each side. There was a place to eat with edible food, although the main onboard entertainment seemed to be feeding birds that would follow the ship and fly very low over our heads.




Tianjin ancient culture street, a tourist area reconstructed to look like a traditional Chinese street. Inside: Chinese tourist junk and Russian gymnastics teams on holiday.


California Beef Noodle King U.S.A. All the rage in California.





As for Tianjin itself, the city isn't very interesting. There's the "Ancient Culture Street", as well as the area around the Drum Tower, which are both touristy places where you can buy all sorts of Chinese tourist junk. There's also some European colonial architecture which is kind of interesting to see, but not that interesting, and a pedestrian-only shopping street which leads up to the Catholic church.

After having my card captured yet again by an Industrial and Commercial Bank of China ATM, we went to the "eating street" we'd read about in the Lonely Planet guide, but it turned out to be quite disappointing and lacking of diners. However, nearby we found an awesome little restaurant serving Xinjiang food. The place was really cheap and gave us tons of great food. Xinjiang food, by the way, is Muslim food from China's northwest. Meat skewers, flatbread, and thick noodles in tomato sauce are all pretty typical Xinjiang food.

We took one of the many trains back to Beijing in the evening. Not a bad trip.

Labels: Tianjin