"We are so LIC."

"LIC" is a phrase one of my friends made up that stands for Lost in China. Today I was definitely "lic-ed" (pronounced: licked). Today's story begins when Lauren and I decided to go to the 798 Art District which is located in northeast Beijing in the Dashanzi district. It is pretty far away from where we are staying so in an attempt to save money, (which we'd rather spend on food) we opted to take public transportation the entire way. We were very determined. So we hopped on the subway, transferred lines just once and after an hour and a half reached our destination. Only, it wasn't our final destination ... we still had to take the 909 Bus in the direction of east.

We were a little confused as to which exit to get off on once we got on the 909 bus so we started looking for English-speakers. We spotted some people from Holland and mid conversation we saw the 909 bus and said a quick goodbye to the kind but quite unhelpful foreigners and got on the bus. We did not know which direction the bus was going and didn't realize that was something we should have thought of before boarding. We sat down and got stared down. Lauren and I are both blond-haired, blue-eyed and therefore standout in the dark-haired crowd. The bus supervisor didn't speak English and after yelling out to the bus asking if anyone spoke English, we were left cluelessly surrounded by only Chinese speakers. After attempting to ask if we were heading in the right direction for nearly 10 minutes, we discovered that we were not going the right way. We hopped off the bus and the other riders waved goodbye to us. We then encountered another problem: we knew which way to go but we had no idea how far we needed to ride or which exit we needed to get off on. We tried to make friends at the bus stop and once we found an English speaker we clinged to her for help. I guess she thought she couldn't handle the task of helping us alone because soon there were at least 7 women surrounding us trying to figure out where the 798 Art District exit was. This is a picture of a woman trying to figure out what exit we needed to go to. Suddenly, our bus arrived and a woman decided it was her duty to escort us onto the bus! Two people in the front seat got up so that Lauren and I had a place to sit. It was so cute and we were happy to be heading in the right direction! This is us on the bus. However, we were much happier when we saw the big red numbers: 798!
We walked through the gates and realized we were starving! We left with the intention of eating lunch within the hour. It had been almost three hours and lunch was about to become "linner" - lunch and dinner. I found a restaurant in my Lonely Planet guidebook that I was dying to go to so we started asking around. However, the language barrier proved to be a problem once again. We scoured the area, searching for "At Cafe" but instead settled for a nameless cafe with maroon umbrellas and lofted ceilings. I had a great veggie sandwich on REAL bread and french fries with actual ketchup! YUMMY :)

Then we started walking around and I found my new favorite spot in Beijing. There were tons of little shops with handmade jewelry, beautiful paintings, photographs and sculptures. Here are some pictures from the area:


After walking around for a couple hours, we decided it was time for dessert. We happened to walk right by the cafe we originally wanted to go to: At Cafe!! We had tiramisu, brownies with ice cream and a blended coffee drink that was so yummy!! This is us at the restaurant. And this is us on the subway ride home.

Tomorrow is the 7th which means ... ONE DAY UNTIL THE OLYMPICS!!!! I'll let you know how the Opening Ceremony goes!

XOXO,
P