Our second day in Ningbo. It’s a Friday here and we had a lighter schedule. Our team split up – some of our other co-workers went on some plant tours outside of town. Donny and I had visited these same factories a year ago, so we opted out.

We did get an opportunity to do some shopping in the morning and so headed out.

View from our hotel room. Please excuse the mess.

Brenda loves the meals here. The buffet breakfast room at this hotel is the largest we’ve ever seen. This is what passes for breakfast for Brenda. Mine looked a lot more recognizable.

There is a Typhoon out in the South China Sea named ’Trami’. It will hit northern Vietnam in a day or two and then bounce back out to sea. We will avoid the worst of it, but the rains started today and did not let up all afternoon and evening.

Out shopping. We had a driver and interpreter (named Ann) with us. She took us to the dodgy part of town where we could find the shady dealers of fake watches, handbags, shoes & etc.

Donny and Meredith are haggling to buy some merchandise to take home to relatives and friends. I got one extra item thrown in at the end and benefitted from all of her work to wear the guy down and get a “good deal”. I’m guessing the vendor still made a mint off of us.

We then headed to the swankier part of the city to window shop and hit a lunch place our translator recommended.

This is another one of the typical Chinese restaurants.. the first floor is where you go and decide what dishes you want ordered, choosing which sea creatures are not long for the world.
Most plates are unidentifiable. Too many of the plates look very unappealing. Donny and I struggled to find a beef and/or chicken dish that would suit us while the ladies safely become staunch vegetarians to avoid nasty surprises and offending our hosts.

In the end it all worked out.

The skies opened up on us after lunch so we stopped at one more large mall before heading back and preparing for some more meetings and a more formal dinner.

Mall entrance.

This is a store where you pay to go in and sit down and pet kitties.

For this store we wish Josie was with us; this place would be right up her alley.

Lobby of our hotel.

Stormy afternoon.

Dinner with the full team again – a French restaurant in Ningbo that was really good and satisfied our “comfort food” craving after days and days of strange plates and protocol.