Day 175: Chongqing
Today was an easy travel day, as we had no activities planned for the afternoon. Lucky for us too, as our Air China flight was delayed by two hours. We were quite annoyed, as we had gotten up early in order to catch a 5:30AM cab from Jiuzhaigou to the airport (which was an hour and a half drive), and had already left the Executive Lounge by the time we realized the flight wasn’t on time (although, the lounge was pretty bare bones, so not a big loss). To console their airport-bound passengers, the Air China agents started handing out free water bottles and bowls of ramen (unfortunately, we were too slow on the uptake, and they ran out by the time we decided we wanted some free noodles).
Since we decided to take the subway into the city, it was after 2PM by the time we reached downtown Chongqing. We were starving (having missed our free ramen!) and not at all in the mood to look up recommended Chinese restaurants. We did the unthinkable – the most sacrilegious thing an adventurous “world-traveler” could do – WE ATE AT MCDONALDS. We tried to be ashamed of our blatant American boorishness, but we couldn’t – Lindsay hadn’t eaten a double-cheese burger in over 5 years, and that shit tasted GOOD.
The Executive Lounge at the Jiuzhaigou Airport was a total let-down – no food, just instant coffee and *warm* orange drink (we refuse to call that artificially sweet, from-concentrate concoction “juice”). When we leave to board our plane, we are once again disappointed to find our flight is delayed, and we have 2 hours to kill in the handful of terminal shops which – other than this *sweet* pair of panda-paw mittens – are full of weird Chinese food
Lindsay’s so tired from our early morning wake-up call!
Taking the Chongqing subway from the airport
We are starving by the time we drop off our bags at the hotel. We don’t want to look for something “authentic” – we want comfort food. McDonalds is engineered to taste good, and does it ever!
Once we had full bellies, we wandered aimlessly around the mall and the neighborhood around our hotel, getting our bearings so we would know where to catch our transportation the next day. We stocked up on a few snacks for our lunches, and headed back thought the alleyways.
Loving the variety of Chinese lucky cats available at the mall
We explore the alley next to our hotel and discover it is the “flower row” of downtown Chongqing. Dozens of floral shops next to each other – it looked and smelled beautiful! We were very tempted to buy some of the psychedelic sparkling blue roses…
While searching for a supermarket for dinner, we discover a huge produce marketplace! The building is bursting with a variety of local veggies
These are the biggest string beans I have ever seen! There are about a dozen varieties of white rice for sale – for the life of me I can’t tell the difference
Just as Igor and Lindsay were admiring the fresh produce and commenting how they would totally do their grocery shopping here if they had to live in China, they decided to explore the upper floor…the meat section. Well, we’ll admit the meat is probably very fresh…we could tell because some of the cuts still had fur and hair on them. When we hypothetically move to China, we’ll probably become vegetarians – Lindsay is not sure she could get used to non-refrigerated meat, no matter how “farm-to-table” it is.
The upstairs meat market where super-fresh animal parts are sold – even the tails and feet!
Walking back to the hotel, we pass even more produce vendors selling their groceries in the alley
Live pigeons, chickens, bunnies, ducks and geese…unfortunately we know this is *not* a pet store. Our bottom lips start to quiver as we pass the doomed caged animals, and our thoughts rush to our beloved chicken Marsala…hoping living a life of free-roaming bliss with her new family on Long Island…
OK, we would *definitely* be vegetarian if we lived here – especially after seeing a pile of bird feet and a bowl of blood next to a herd of live geese!
We also saw buckets of turtles and gold fish next to the live birds – we’re going to pretend these are destined for aquariums and backyard ponds (despite all evidence to the contrary)
Back to our high-rise hotel room at the Glenview – the view of the skyscrapers makes us nostalgic for Midtown Manhattan! The room deserves every one of its four stars, and we soak in the luxury of our fancy room and English-language movie channels