Day 10 - Shopping at Shamian

Today we took a short trip over to Shamian Island.  This small bit of land was a French and British concession back in the day and once housed multiple foreign consulates.  It is a very beautiful place to visit with historic buildings originally designed in British colonial style.

Our first stop was to the Protestant Church for an 11 AM English/Mandarin service.  We heard the service was good, but was not able to experience it ourselves because Hannah had other plans.  After crying for about 30 minutes we were done with our morning tantrum.  By the way, it sure is nice having been around the block once now.  We actually know where we are going here and don't feel quite as lost here like we did last time.

We spent the rest of the morning roaming the island looking for souvenir gifts for people back home.  We even ran into a few store keepers who seemed to remember us from last year.  I promised I would bring them back the picture we took last year so they could see it.  True to Shamian we also saw many Chinese tourists and many woman taking selfie glamour shots.

 

For lunch we ate at Lucy's.  They try really hard to be an American restaurant, but you know what, it is just really hard.  Deanna played it safe (not!) by ordering a Cheese Pizza.  After one bite she quickly determined that her $10 pizza was made with ketchup instead of tomato sauce.  Matt had black pepper fillet which was good and Hannah ate rice off of Matt's plate.

After lunch, we stopped at the public playground and Hannah got to show off for us by going down the slide.  She really enjoyed playing at the park with the other Chinese children.  After the park, we hit a few more shops and then took a taxi back to hotel.  There, Hannah took a nap while mom and dad hung out.

After naptime, we went with a few other families to a Mexican restaurant in town called Tekila's.  They actually have pretty decent Mexican food, the waitresses speak decent English, and the best part ... they have a play area for children!