Monday, May 2, 2011

China Post #9 Xinghai Square

On Saturday we all headed into Dalian to check out Xinghai square. The day was kind of overcast and foggy, it reminded me a lot of San Francisco. In fact the weather here is very much like in the SF bay area. This is supposed to be one of the must see locations in Dalian and billed as the largest square in Asia, though it is more of an ellipse. The main feature of the square itself is this tall totem right in the middle.
Carved into the ground around the totem are all 12 of the Chinese zodiac signs. Below the signs are the elements and below those are the years for each sign and element. Here is Dylan next to his.
Outside the zodiac circle there were fields of flowers and in the background if you looked inland, there are loads of tall buildings, usually built in pairs.
There was a bike rental place just outside of the "square". Lots of people were renting tandems and triple bikes like this one.
This group was having some trouble getting started again.

Headed out of the "square" towards the beach there is this long sculpture of footprints.
They lead to a sculpture of a boy and girl playing in the sand up on this platform.
It was almost like a stretched half pipe for skate boarding. It was really steep at the tops and kids were trying to roller blade or ride scooters down it. We stopped at a coffee shop nearby that looked good and had been recommended by some of the "mommies" from the local expat group. While it was expensive the mocha and irish cream cheese cake were very good.
All around the edge of the ellipse were these wire mesh sculptures of people doing sports, I think there were all olympic events.

Back towards town is a large expo hall that is all glass on the front which made for nice reflections of the buildings behind.
For dinner we headed into uptown to a place called Brooklyn which is owned by an asian-american from Chicago. They are known for having the best pizza in town. We arrived before they actually opened but we're allowed in to look around and at the menu. This is the upstairs eating area.
The sausage panini was great.
and the pizza was definitely better than any other pizza we've had out here and it would be a pretty good restaurant in the US. It is just nice sometimes to eat something that your body is more accustomed to.
Here is a video of a game that several people were playing off of Xinghai square, out by the beach. I have no idea what it is called.

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