The Pursuit of Dumplings: 天津 (Tianjin)

The 所谓 long (3 days...) inter-semester weekend was spent in 天津 a city only 30 minutes away by train, and by train I mean bullet-train. Traveling at 330 km/hr (~200mph) was surprisingly smooth. After stepping out of the train station, the first thing I noticed about Tianjin was that the 环境污染 (pollution) was worse than 北京 in that the smog was more dense, the air was stickier, etc... After checking into the hotel, we hopped in taxi#1 to go the beach! After an hour long drive, we arrived at a different part of Tianjin, but still no beach, so we decided to have lunch at one of the local seafood restaurants. When we walked into the restaurant, we were first shown to a room with all the seafood the restaurant had to offer.

That's a lot of seafood.

Overall, the meal (clams, shrimp, fish, etc.) was excellent and relatively cheap compared to American prices (as usual). After the the seafood bonanza, we hopped into taxi #2 for what was supposedly a short ride to the beach. 10 minutes later we arrived at the water's edge, except this was more like a harbor/bay/not the beach.

The group at the faux beach.

Nice Architecture.

We then proceeded to walk around for a while. Still not satisfied we hopped into cab #3 where we were then taken to the 所谓 "so called" beach. Apparently, it was high tide so the sand was not visible, but I'm going call that total BS. Although the water was littered with empty bottles, I still walked in up to my knees, but I didn't stay in to long for fear of contracting some sort of water-borne disease.

Favorite Teacher!

Attractive photo of myself.

After the beach, we headed back to the hotel, rested a bit, went to see Little Italy (not that impressive), ate dinner, then proceeded to walk around Tianjin. The best part was seeing an old man continuously doing the "Monkey" dance as exercise in the park. After walking around, we retreated to the hotel and played cards until 2 in the morning.

Little Italy...

The following day, breakfast consisted of a KFC wrap except that it had a 老北京味道 old Beijing flavor (kind of like the flavor of Peking duck except with chicken). After walking around the city for quite a bit, we had lunch at a mall, and then hopped on the train back to Beijing. Overall the trip was a lot of fun. Whew, now I'll let the pictures do the talking.