The big freeze

1/11/09 - 4/11/09 - Qingdao, China

We said goodbye to Korea on Saturday afternoon departing Seoul from Incheon port onboard a very nice ferry .

The Royal suite (!) served us well and we arrived after a good night's sleep into Qingdao on Sunday morning. The first thing we noticed was that is was bloomin' freezing in Qingdao, from a pleasant 20+ degrees in Seoul we were plunged into near zero-degree temperatures.

Coats, hats and gloves were adorned inside and out as we found our very cool (chilled in every way) hostel which was the town's converted old observatory situated on a hill in the old town.

We set off to explore Qingdao and immediately found an authentic Sunday market featuring some very tasty steamed buns and some interesting-looking seafood in varying states of life and death.

It was a clear, sunny, cold and windy day as we explored the hilly city. Qingdao is a quite charming city with a quaint and well-preserved old town, bustling port, sandy beach and obviously slightly deranged people swimming in the sea. Astrid urbaneered by flying her kite with the local kite-flyers next to the observatory.

Qingdao is a very prosperous area and this is reflected in the mass of skyscrapers in the new city which hosted the Olympic sailing in 2008. The city boasts the Tsingtao brewery which we visited and also some great seafood retaurants of which we made full use. Overall, we enjoyed our short stay in Qingdao, but were glad to head south to escape the creep of the Chinese winter and the chilly sea-breeze!