Olympiads

On 9 June, we went out late as Rosabelle woke up early enough, but fell asleep soon at close to her cereal lunch time. By the time we headed out, it was close to 2 pm, and we decided to fully exploit the good weather and head outdoors to the Beijing Olympic venue.

Wayne and I last visited the place when we watched the finals of the gymnastics last year, with Rosabelle still in my tummy, so we were thinking of going there for a late McDonald's lunch. Alas, we found out only there that they'd torn down the McDonald's (probably made more than enough in the few weeks there!), and we drove around before finally settling on a Pizza Hut lunch. Simon and Marianne enjoyed the fast food lunch, haha!

Only sad thing is I realized only much too late when in the car on the way to the Olympics venue that one side of Rosabelle's pair of Mary Jane pink socks was missing - likely to be at the Pizza Hut, and we did not bother to go back and retrieve it...sigh!

When we reached the area with busloads of tourists from other parts of China (almost 90% of the parked vehicles were large tourist buses), the sun was shining brightly, but at the same time, there were strong winds, so it was not as hot.

Rosabelle was in a perky mood, looking around at passers-by around her.

And trying to attract her Daddy's attention and playing with him...

That's the 3 of us again, and this time you can see Rosabelle when she was previously in my tummy!

My family took photos of the National Aquatics Centre (it was already 5 pm by the time it was there, and its doors closed at 4:30 pm).

At the National Indoor Stadium.

And of course the unmistakable Bird's Nest - the National Stadium.

We managed to get into the Bird's Nest by rushing to buy tickets (it closed at 6 pm) - paid RMB50 per adult (children under 1.2m get in free).

There were loads of other tourists milling around, and the Fuwa mascots were blown up so that we could get well, touristy, shots.

Sis was playing around with the kids, and did a dance with Rosabelle (where the latter cleverly held onto her hat for fear of it dropping!).

And we basically just sat and stood around to soak in the atmosphere (the place was not as huge as I thought). I particularly like this series of photos I captured of my sis, mum, and Rosabelle horsing around.

We also took photos of ourselves as fake spectators.

As usual, Wayne and I like to take such close-ups of ourselves, haha!

And with our little one to make it a complete picture!

Close to 5:50pm, the PA started blasting announcements for us to look after our elderly and young to ensure we all leave by 6pm sharp, and they blared (really loudly) Beijing Olympics songs ad nauseum, likely to force us to leave. It was not an easy walk out as they sealed off most exits and we had to walk almost a semi-circle to get out - they want to chase us out, but do not make it easy for us, so dumb...The Olympic Green is not really worth half a day's itinerary (and corresponding ticket costs) if you are pressed for time, since there isn't much to see after the Games.

There were passing showers when we were walking to the car, so luckily we had our brollies with us. By the time we started the drive home, all 3 kids fell fast asleep and we went home to recharge first, whilst Rosabelle stayed home and had her dinner and bath before having an early night at 10:15pm.

Wayne and I then brought my family out to Shin Kong Place again to try the Bellagio restaurant there. The Taiwanese restaurant is quite a good place to go as it's famous for its desserts as well but yet again, it's been awhile since we went there, and it has now fallen way short. The food was over-salty, the service sloppy, and worst of all, they had the audacity to want to charge us RMB15 each for a glass of plain water! We also could not get dessert as their bar counter closed at 10 pm, and we had only started eating at 9:50 pm, so we could not possibly have dessert with our food, right? Bad, bad, bad food and experience...tsk tsk...

Not a great dinner to cap an otherwise fulfilling, but tiring, day!