Qingdao: Beer and Beach

Warning:  Contains stories of beer.

On the last weekend in August, I flew down to Qingdao with a new teacher, Fiona.  The Qingdao Beer Festival was finishing up that weekend, so we decided to get out of the polluted Beijing air and have a sunny weekend at the beach.  It rained the first day, but the second day was a beauty!

We met a girl at breakfast who writes for a blog I've been reading since I decided to move to China.  We exchanged numbers and planned to meet up later at the festival.  After breakfast, Fiona and I decided to walk on the beach and eventually figure out where the beer festival was taking place.

On our walk we saw rusty metal men:

Melty metal men:

And creepy horses:

Then we found the beer festival and saw beer poses:

And bathrooms:

We drank beer:

We ate crepes in the rain:

And finally met up with the friends:

The plan was to get to one of the beaches where more beer was waiting for us.  The beach we were going to was far away though, so we tried to catch a ride.

Soon, one of the new friends sweet-talked a guy into letting us use his car.  The guy's driver had just dropped him off at the festival and said that his driver could take all eight of us in his car over to the beach (a 40 minute drive at least) - for free!  Woo!

We made it to the beach and drank our first beer with straws out of plastic bags.

You know the game where you hit the top of someone's beer bottle with the bottom of yours so that the beer starts coming out the top of theirs and they have to drink quickly?  Well, there is a game with drinking beer out of plastic bags with straws too.  You stab someone's bag with your straw so the beer is coming out the straw hole.  Oh, beer games.

We also put our feet in the Yellow Sea.

In the evening, we went back to the beer festival.

And had more crepes and beer:

And met Mickey Mouse:

The next day was sunny and gorgeous.  We took the bus to another area of the city and saw lots of brides:

We saw a giant jellyfish:

We had lunch and headed back to our hotel to check out.  We said goodbye to the beer festival and caught a taxi to the airport.  Our flight was delayed so we got to check out the Ear, Nose, and Throat Medicine in the terminal:

More pictures at flickr.

--Sarah--