JM pulled a muscle in his foot yesterday and was quite uncomfortable walking today - so we cancelled the "Day in Quanzhou a 7 hour tour. As lovely as it sounded - Sprawling Buddhist Temple, impressive maritime museum, Kaiyuan Temple's 100 pillars, two pagodas, stunning hall and inscribed temple walls going back to the Song Dynasty - I wasn't overly disappointed. John sucked it up, took two Tylenol and we snuck off the ship, took the shuttle to the pedestrian shopping street, Zhongshan. As advertised, hundreds of shopping malls and little individual shops and great bargains! Actually, I found some incredible treasures I haven't seen anywhere else... small pottery balls with two or three faces and red tassels, now safely wrapped and tucked away. No one was happy with MasterCard or AMEX, so John found an ATM and pulled out more Yuan (RMB), more later. We found pearls everywhere, nice shops, stalls, some still in the oyster shells... the shells were about 6"-8" ovals, with multiple golden pearl, up to 15 or 18! You could by them by the unstrung strand, or strung, or loose. Quite fun to see all of the colors - we even saw a shop filled with South Sea Pearls in a rainbow of colors. We picked up more gifts and headed back to the ship. We had just missed the shuttle, so hunted down a taxi, but in the mean time were accosted by a Buddhist monk giving us a "golden Kaiguang Amulet (paper) with "Work Smoothly, Lifetime Peace" with a lotus on one side and the Goddess on the other... then you need to sign your name in the book, mention where you're from, and how much your are going to donate!
All this touring is exhausting! So return to the ship, with our comfortable bathrooms, afternoon tea, and the promise of Caviar with my Champagne this evening. Oh Yay!
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