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June 20, 2005
I'd be lying if I said we did anything interesting today
Sometimes, after several consecutive days of both frenzied action and ongoing illness, you just need a down day. For us, Monday was it. We rose late, showered, cleaned the kid up, medicated ourselves and made our way to the café just before the end of breakfast.
Over French toast, fruit, bacon, yogurt and croissant, we discussed our plan of action for the day. The plan was basically that there would be no action. We felt like spending a day relaxing and getting to know our new daughter better. I think both of us still feel more like babysitters than parents, and playtime seemed at the time to ease that a bit.
Leaving the cafe, we headed out for some time wandering. Shamian is a nice place for that -- busy, but not so overwhelming as Guangzhou proper. Also full of tourist traps, but those are supplemented by a fair number of genuinely nice places. We bought nothing, conserving our limited spending money largely until the last possible moment (partly so we'd have a better idea of our suitcase space), but we did enjoy another round of lime Fanta.
Here's a hint, Coca Cola: If you want to make Fanta popular in the US, the Fantanas aren't the way to do it. Make it the way you do overseas.
After a few hours of strolling, sitting and window shopping, we discussed lunch options. Shamian has several nice restaurants, and we had been warned against only the Golden Bowl (Kristen and Joe got sick there). In the end, though, wanting to keep thing inexpensive, we ordered from Danny's again.
Over a hamburger lunch, we watched a Discovery Channel piece on increasing weather disasters. Both the show and the lunch complete, we prepared a bottle for Emma and put her down for a nap. Lara followed suit, while I first read, then played a bit of Lumines, and eventually slept a bit myself.
We woke around midafternoon and, as groggy as could be, both declined to leave the room again. Instead, we played with Emma while paying passing attention to an episode of MythBusters wherein they took on the longstanding urban myth of the "JATO booster on the Chevy" and the "drink six Cokes and six packets of Poprocks and your stomach will explode" chestnut. I shall spare you the details of their testing, but it might safely be deemed both entertaining and mildly disgusting.
Later we took Emma down to the Swan Room, a playroom sponsored by Mattel in the hotel basement. Emma, now all smiles and laughs, showed every interest in a wide variety of toys, giving us hope that she would catch up quickly once we got home. Our evening consisted of yet another dinner from Danny's and an early bedtime.
See? I told you we didn't do anything interesting.
Posted by brlittle at June 20, 2005 01:25 PM