Beijing-Pandas, Volleyball, and Scorpions

The rain continued through the night. It’s just lightly raining now, fortunately. We’re getting an earlier start today. We’ve planned three hours to make it to the venue for the women’s volleyball event. Leaving the room at 9:30 a.m., we make our traditional stop by McDonald’s for some breakfast to go, then stop at an information booth to confirm our plan for getting to the venue. It’s at that point that I realize I left the volleyball tickets in the room. Better to find that out now rather than later! After running back to the room, we now have two and half hours to get to the venue.

We reach our closest subway stop to the event much sooner than expected. This stop is very close to the Beijing Zoo, home of a well-known Giant Panda exhibit. I float the idea about stopping by the zoo to Aaron. He’s on board with it.

These guys were great. They are so funny. We are very glad we made this stop.

Taking a taxi from the zoo to the venue, we’re still an hour and a half early. I remembered passing a Pizza Hut. We have been craving pizza for a while. We’d also like to have a better lunch than yesterday, which consisted of an individual size bag of potato chips and a coke.

We walk back and enjoy Pizza Hut, Beijing style. It’s more high-end than the Huts in the U.S. We are seated on the second floor of what you would perceive to be a very nice restaurant. Our waiter is very professional and dressed well. The pizzas are the same, but this menu also offers escargot(!), calamari, and other nicer dinner items.

Reaching our seats in the venue, the lady next to me introduces herself. She is the lady I bought the tickets from on eBay. She is a Chinese woman living in New York, excited to be attending the Games in her home country.

The first match is USA vs. Cuba. It starts out well, but our USA women get put away pretty handily, three games to zero. The Cuban women are good, but the USA women make a lot of errors. They must have served out or into the net at least six or seven times.

There was a strong USA contingent there cheering our ladies on. Russia is playing in the second match of the day, and the Russian fans are chanting for the Cubans.

The next match, Brazil vs. Russia is play on another level. Many of the points are long battles. It’s exciting and the crowd is into it. Brazilian fans never disappoint. Covered in yellow and green, they sing and cheer loudly for their home team. Although playing better than the American women, the Russians are no match for the powerhouse that is Brazil. Brazil wins, three matches to zero.

After the matches, which were one of the many highlights of this trip, we drop some things off at the room, then head for some last minute gift shopping at the Friendship Store in Beijing.

From there, we head to the street markets of Wangfujing. This is a high energy place. All sorts of unusual foods are sold by the vendors here. Fried squid on a stick seems to be the most popular selection, but fried silkworms, scorpions, snake, lizards, and seahorses are all available too. I have every intention of ordering a stick of scorpion when I arrive, but I have a change of heart. They are still moving on the stick before being grilled. I decide to pass.

We walk around some more and buy an iron dragon art piece we had seen before, had not bought, but wished we had. As we’re about to leave, I change my mind about the scorpions. I can’t miss this opportunity. One order of scorpions, please.

First bite – a tiny stick of a leg. Not too much flavor, but not bad. Time to go for it. One whole scorpion. Actually, it’s not bad, maybe even good. I couldn’t place it at the time, but it resembles soft shell crab a bit. They are fried in a hot spicy oil on a grill. They have some fire to them. Aaron tried some as well.

For desert, a stick of pineapple with a crispy sugar coating around it. Pretty good!

After a quick stop at Romana in the nearby mall for some more of that amazing gelato, we grab some rolls to go at a bakery so we’ll have something for breakfast in the morning. We still have to pack tonight and be ready to meet our cab to the airport at 4:30 a.m.