We never know where we are going

May 3, 2007 Thursday

We needed some breakfast stuff, so decided to go to Carrefour for lunch and shopping. When we got in the cab, Chuck said, “Maybe we could go to the other Carrefour?” There are two here in Hefei, and we had driven by the 2^nd one on our way to several restaurants.

“That would be great,” I replied, “but, I have no idea how to tell him to go to the other one.”

I showed the driver my paper and off we went – to the 2^nd Carrefour. Now, I have gone by taxi to the 1^st one at least 3 times, with exactly the same direction sheet. I have no idea why we went someplace else.

This Carrefour doesn’t have the restaurant floor, so we made do with MacDonald’s. It was either that or KFC. Instead, it had a bazaar on the top floor which opened into a rooftop garden, complete with ponds.

Shopped and went home. (4 flights)

Did some more PowerPoint in the afternoon. There is just one more thing that Chuck has to get and then we are done!!

We went to a Hot Pot restaurant for dinner. We had a phrase book and pointed to “What is your specialty?” and “What do you recommend?” Many giggles and then a menu with pictures. We made a mistake when we looked at the picture. We choose the cooking liquid (actually 2 in a divided pot) and thought that it included the stuff you put in to cook. We ordered several other things and couldn’t understand why the waitress was so insistently pointing out other stuff. It wasn’t until food came that we realized our mistake. The girl was sooo relieved when the light dawned. She ran right over with the menu to help us pick our main course. (The young women here were extraordinarily helpful with everything.)

We had octopus, meatballs, shrimp, greens and lotus root. We also had some small round pancake looking things. We unwound them like a cinnamon roll, but they were like a stringy pastry. Then we dipped into honey. Watermelon

This restaurant was just down the street from the North West gate. But the construction is so terrible, we took a longer way that was paved. We walked a little further on to explore a little after dinner and then went home. (4 flights)