"TOMB SWEEPERS" HOLIDAY

WE HAVE A LONG WEEKEND OFF FOR THE NATIONAL HOLIDAY CALLED "TOMB SWEEPERS HOLIDAY, AND ARE TAKING THAT TIME FOR A SHORT VACATION AWAY IN QINGDAO: BEACH CITY ON THE YELLOW SEA.

We have been here before, but this time we are experienced. What a great smooth express train ride on the "bullet train" with two other English Teacher Couples. We have had a ball. We are now in our 3 Star Hotel with an ocean view. It is a little place, but cute. We have the only top floor suite, but it has flashing hotel sign lights coming in the windows...

This is our Hotel "JAIL MUSEUM" area in the same complex we visited last year. The old Jail. We are not inside the jail, but next door to it...

When we arrived in Qingdao we took a taxi to our hotel. It wasn't far from the train station, and when we drove up to it, I became really excited. We had been here before. It was the old German Jail Hotel. Of course it has the name of the Beach Castle in Qingdao (look it up on internet). Our room is the one that is the Delux with the ocean view. We really can see the ocean, but way far away. After we got settled into our room we went to find some real western-type food. After about a 2 mile walk we ended up at a Chinese restaurant. Well, much to our surprise we had a really good meal. Of course, it helps to be really, really hungry.

Now we are back at our apartment and waiting for a friend we met three weekends ago with Dr. Wu. to visit with us. He is also down in Qingdao and is going to help us see some cool places here.

We are taking pictures, but forgot to bring the dowload wire so we could put them on the computer blog here. We are using pictures from our last trip but taking video which we do have the download wire for.

The train trip was really wonderful. It is spring here and all the fams and fields are already green. Everything is so different and great to see. There are miles and miles of farm land on the way. They have all these millions (over 1 billion) people to feed and they have all this land making and growning food to feed the people. The short (5 foot high), wide, green houses, that are really blue, and go on forever. I wanted to take a picture, it looks just like a huge lake of (blue) green houses. Hopeful we will be able to take a picture on the way back.

I am looking forward to tomorrow and the many things we get to show the other two couples we are with and also the new things we did not see when we were here last winter. Dana

QINGDAO IS KNOWN FOR THIS ENERGETIC SCULPTURE ON THE BEACH.