Met a couple from the Road Scholar tour this morning at
breakfast. She taught math &
engineering at the HS level.Anyway, they were well informed, had read
many of the books Road Scholar had suggested for the tour, were easy to talk
to.
We swapped tales of how adept our children had been with
computers at young ages.
I have to confess, I'm not very intrepid. For one thing, I have yet to use a restroom
outside the hotel. I've been coming back
at lunch partly for that reason (partly because I get tired and my legs hurt
after a morning of walking).
Today, I'd told myself I was going to visit the Bell
Tower and the Drum Tower. Now, it should
have occurred to me that sights incorporating "tower" in their name
usually involve stairs. I paid for my
ticket (to both the bell & drum towers), entered the staircase of the drum
tower, and saw this huge flight of steep stairs -- there were banisters, but I
couldn't imagine being at the top of them and looking down, and descending step
by step. My courage also failed me at
the Bell tower. So that was $4.20
wasted.
I wound up going to Behai Park -- very pretty walkways,
on a lake, a wiser choice for someone so altitudinally challenged.
I went to the restaurant across the street -- not as nice
as the Szechuan one for yesterday -- it specialized in Shannxi cooking, but I
ordered green beans with peppers and, when the waitress pointed to some peppers
in a picture, I nodded my head vigorously, maybe too vigorously, because the
dish came back with immense amts of Szechuan peppercorns. My triumph was, I managed to ask "Please
bring (cooked) rice" and they did!!
I was so proud of myself.
All in the name of experience.
The tour met for the first time this evening, in a
private dining room. (Where and when to meet hadn't been in the pre-trip
literature -- I asked at the front desk, but they didn't know). I went down to the lobby @ 5:30, and saw the
couple I'd met at breakfast.
We had beers -- mine came in a very odd,
asymmetric glass that listed to the side
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