Rainbow's in China: Weekend Adventures, Eaten Alive

The only open space in the park

This weekend we had two adventure filled days together. Saturday we went back to a park that we hadn't adequately explored before and Sunday we explored a part of town that I've been meaning to explore because a friend mentioned a really cool kids exhibit.

There is a ton of construction here. Sometimes when they block off areas for the construction they make it really hard to get to certain areas. There's a coffee shop that I frequent that is surrounded by construction and thus only has one way to get to it which includes walking on the side of a highway. For one of my daily adventures, I decided I would walk the other way around the construction to get there. As a result of this I ended up having to frogger across a huge highway, 12 lanes or so. But the up side was I walked into a really beautiful park that is almost impossible to get to using normal walking routes. I brought Dylan to this recently discovered park and while we were there we found a coffee shop in the middle of the park. How random is that? The owner was quite excited to see us and really wanted us to stay there. We were on our way out for lunch at that point, so we didn't stay. But we wanted to go back. And we did.

Across the street from the park is a shopping area that I frequent. It's called Central Walk and has a really good grocery store. On the top of this mall is what looks like a highway overpass that goes into that park I've already mentioned. From looking at it from the street there's tons of plants growing up there; very green and lush. I know that mall really well and I felt fairly confident that you couldn't get to that green space from the mall even though it seemed to be partly on the roof. I was wrong. You have to go into the center of a clothing store and go up a spiral staircase to get there. Who would have figured that out?

On Saturday we went back to the park. We actually had a hard time finding the coffee shop again, mostly because the two signs in the park with the coffee cup were pointing in the wrong direction. (Ha Ha!) I had a really good drink and hung out for a bit. As a result of sitting there for maybe half an hour I walked away with 30+ bites all over my calves. Yuck! We decided to try and get to that overpass from the park and we figured out how to get there, and then went into Central Walk for lunch.

Craft fairs are the same all over the world

On Sunday we went to a neighborhood that we had never been to in search of a kids art exhibit that I had heard about. This neighborhood is filled with old warehouses; it reminds me of ABCO, the Oakland warehouse Dylan used to live in. Before we found the museum we ran into a craft fair! It's interesting that pretty much everything there is the same as you would find in the US. Custom T-shirts, lots of jewelry, leather covered notebooks, felted things, toys.

We decided that we were hungry and so we went to lunch at a hot pot restaurant. It was such a great place! I wish we could always eat like that. Basically, the menu consists of raw vegetables, tofu, noodles and soup bases. You pick your ingredients and then cook them at your table. This is one of the first restaurants that I've been to that had their dishes plastic sealed and they gave you tea to rinse them with before use. I'd read about this before I came here, but hadn't actually seen it yet.

After the art exhibit, which turned out to be really great (see video), Maddie and I explored OCT more. The neighborhood is so great. Lots of walking paths that are off the roads, tons of green. And the buildings are mostly shorter, except for a couple apartment buildings. I think if I had to choose right now, that is where I would want to live. Futian is nice enough, but OCT is funky and artsy.