Asia Holiday 2014, August 09 (Trainjin)

I had a pretty early breakfast again at 7:00am, although that was already a bit behind schedule. The breakfast was the same standard menu again, but today they had also added fried dough bread sticks next to the french fries - everything is better when it's fried.

I jogged down to the subway station to make up some time, and after changing lines once I made it to the intercity railway station at 8:30am. I thought my ticket was for the 9:00am train, but I double checked and saw it was 8:50am so I was cutting it pretty fine. The train had already started boarding by the time I got to the platform, but I made it just in time. Sadly no wifi on the train, but it was over pretty quickly as it went at nearly 300 km/h and took only 35 minutes to reach Tianjin.

Getting out of the station it took a while to figure out which direction to head in, I had my tablet with GPS but I had no offline maps for Tianjin so it was pretty useless. There was some structure in the middle of the roundabout that looked like one of the bosses from a Final Fantasy game, but otherwise provided no help in telling me which direction to go in.

No idea.

Instead I started following the river - they have lots of bridges crossing over the river, kind of like a poor man's Paris. Soon I found a sign for Italian Town which was my first destination for the day. The place didn't really seem all that Italian, there was lots of ice cream vendors and some craft and souvenir stores - lots of postcards but no magnets. Actually there was one place selling magnets, but they only had Italy magnets - why !?

Tianjin River, a suspicious green color from close up.

An Italian Town, just not sure which one.

Crossing over the river I went to Ancient Culture Street which sounded nice but was just the same shop repeated over and over again, selling stuff like chopsticks and wood carvings. There was lots of aisles running in all directions, but I didn't have much time to explore so I just walked from the bottom to the top and away.

The next stop was the Tianjin Eye - a fully operational ferris wheel ! It was a very long walk to get there, not really worth the time it took, but there was one highlight - passing a fake Nike store which had copied the Nike logo shape and color and just turned it upside down. I'm not sure what the brand was actually called.

Heading back in the opposite direction I walked around the Drum Tower, it seemed just like a big box-shaped building. There was more craft and food stores surrounding it.

Almost the Nike factory.

The all seeing eye.

The Drum Tower.

Having been walking all morning I was keen for some lunch so I went to the Joy City shopping centre. There was a number of restaurants that already had people lining up outside waiting for a table. They do the same thing in Japan, set up a row of seats outside for people to sit in line and have a read of the menu and wait patiently, what fun that must be. There were a few places that weren't so busy, but nothing great, so I just went to the Bread Top instead. Unlike the Australian version, the Chinese Bread Top is probably the worst and least imaginative of all the local bakeries, pretty disappointing.

Not a lot of joy.

I took the subway down to the south end of the city and came out near St Joseph Cathedral. It was just a small cathedral that you can go inside and have a walk around, pretty standard. I was also at one end of Binjiang Dao, the major shopping mall that runs the length of the city. They have lots of small trolley cars transporting shoppers up and down, I nearly got run over by these damn things a number of times as they just drive all over the place and you don't hear them coming.

Outside the cathedral.

Inside the cathedral.

The shops all seemed to be coming by in a loop, there would be a KFC, then a store selling Nike products, then a McDonald's, then another KFC - the KFC's were even selling an imitation K-Flurry ! I walked down a couple of streets to get to Chifeng Dao, where I found this cool house made of porcelain, it was similar to some of the Gaudi houses in Barcelona. Back to the shopping street and to Liaoning Food Street. It was like the food street in Beijing, a bit smaller and less crowded, but just as many weird things. There was a place selling churros with ice cream which looked great, but I wasn't the only one who thought so as there was already a big line waiting to collect their order.

Porcelain, also known as fine china, what a coincidence !

Snack time again.

Churro shop, needed a bigger zoom for the queue.

Since my day in Tianjin was almost over already I started heading back to the railway station. I didn't have enough time to go out to Beining Park which I had circled on my map, but there was a "Wal-Mart market" listed nearby so I went to see if it was the same as the American version. When I got there it turned out to instead be another shopping centre called "We Life mall" instead, so that was a pretty poor failure in translation.

Back at the Tianjin River.

• Tianjin Summary
• 6 out of 10
• Good
• Smaller and easier to get around than Beijing
• Good river walkway
• Bad
• Didn't have time to see everything
• Streets are a bit confusing in some areas, usually have to cross with the traffic at street level
• Missed Out
• Beining Park
• Olympic Stadium and parks area

When I got back to Beijing I still had a little time left in the day. I found a store called Wedome Bakery before leaving the railway station that was selling Luo Song Bread ! it was alright but not as good as the ones I remember having in Kuala Lumpur last year.

I stopped off in Wangfujing to buy some magnets as I hadn't seem them on sale anywhere else, and I was running out of time in Beijing, then I got back on the subway to track down the local Fatburger for dinner. I was pretty excited to discover there was a local store for this American fast food chain, they have a veggie burger on the menu and you can choose either one, two or three patties. I found the store with surprising ease, not far from the subway station...only they had no veggie burgers !

So that was pretty sad, and I started heading back to the hotel instead. My feet were starting to feel like stone from all of the walking I'd done already, so I just stopped in at a place called Groove Cafe close to the hotel. To my surprise I found that they had nachos and a combination fries/wedges basket on the menu, as well as a chocolate chip milkshake, which more than made up for the Fatburger disaster. Yet again they did not have credit card facilities in the store, but somehow they can afford to install machines that validate 100 RMB notes.

Nachos to the rescue !