China Day Three, Qingdao Concert

After two rather long days of travel we had a chance for a little rest and relaxation before our first performance in China.  I think we slept about 12 hours that night.  When I got up I checked out the view and then thought I'd check out the panorama feature on my new camera.

We decided to go out and walk around.  The beach was about three blocks from our hotel, of course that was the first place we went.  I love the beach in any kind of weather, but it was very COLD at this beach.  And even though it was a sunny day, it was very hazy from pollution.  It felt kind of surreal.  Nevertheless, it was nice to see the the water and walk on the sand and pretend that it was warmer than it actually was.

Reality struck when I saw my first Chinese toilet.  I had forgotten about these things, which I first encountered in Japan years ago.  Yuck!  I'll leave it at that.

So we walked and walked all morning long and saw a bunch of buildings and the beach.  It was nothing to write home about - it kind of reminded me of the skyscraper section of Ocean City in the wintertime, only colder and hazier.

After lunch we decided to ride a bus into downtown, just so that we could see more of the city.  Things are very spread out and it was too far to walk.  The bus we took in went along the seaside and I had a chance to do another panorama shot.

The route back to the hotel was more inland and I had a chance to take a picture of the theater where we would be playing that night.  It's actually quite a bit bigger than it looks in the photo below.  That was an extremely large dog.