Beike has a driver you can hire for the day to take you around named Charlie. Us and another family decided to reserve Charlie for the day and do some sight-seeing/ souvenir shopping. First stop was ZhanShan Temple in downtown Qingdao. Qingdao is sort of a newer city and the temple is not very old. Still, it is a working temple with authentic Chinese architecture... beautiful! There were several buildings with Buddhas inside where you could make an offering or kneel and pray with incense. We saw many people doing this. One building housed a giant bell called "The Prayer Bell." For 5 Yuan (.75 cents) you can ring the bell 3 times as you pray. Sarah and Bridget each took a turn at it.
From there, Charlie took us to the main shopping area, a sort of indoor swap meet known as Jimo Road. We found some neat stuff and then asked Charlie if he knew where we could find Chinese dresses. Charlie took us through 2 buildings, down 2 flights and make twists and turns later we came to a dressmaker's shop. We tried on dresses, but nothing really fit right and Sarah and I couldn't agree on a pattern. Sarah was insistent on dragons and I wanted a darker jewel color. Finally, we found some awesome material (deep red with gold and rainbow colored dragons) and the dressmaker measured us for custom, matching dresses. Even though Charlie speaks limited English he was able to interpret all our wishes to the seamstress - it was sort of a funny process since he's a guy and we had to play charades with our body parts most of the time :o) Our dresses will be ready on Tuesday!
We finished up the day with lunch at an American restaurant called "The Diner" - complete with cheeseburgers and coke!
(still can't find any diet soda in this country though)
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