Low-Key Tuesday

Today was a "rest day" for us.... Mom and I slept in and then headed out to the Hou Hai lake region to meet up with Ron and the group from the Hartford! They were kind enough to have invited us to tag along on their planned day of rickshaw touring and lunch...we had a blast!

Ron and I haggling for a shirt on Opium Street

The outing began as a bit of shopping on Opium Street (and no, no opium was ingested/inhaled/purchased... the street is named after the activities that happened there long long ago!), followed by a fantastic lunch at "No Name Restaurant." There was so much food!!!!! We ate and ate and ate...

After lunch, we all loaded onto rickshaws and took a tour of the hutong in the area. On this tour, we stopped in one of the poorer homes and were served tea by the nice lady who lived there... then for comparison, we stopped in one of the richer homes and were given a tour. It was neat to be able to see the inside of these places... they were both nicer than I expected from the way they look on the outside. Even the poorer home had a big TV!! The richer home had a flatscreen!

On our rickshaw

In the alleys between the poorer hutong homes

The Hartford folks and their IPC contact were able to score us some tickets to watch the bronze medal wheelchair basketball game between the USA and Great Britain. Great Britain won (boo!), but we had a good time watching and cheering for our boys!

Wheelchair Basketball

That was about it for the day... we were too stuffed to have a real dinner, and it was raining and chilly anyway, so Ron went back to the Village and mom and I headed back to the hotel and ordered room service noodles! :) For a rest day, we still managed to wear ourselves out!

Oh, and of course I didn't forget...the cute kids of the day! The little girl in the red was a little diva and was a ham until the camera came out, then she wanted to run away! Her little friend was sweet though and wanted to pose for the pictures!