Day 9: When In Rome: Tennis, Street food, Exploring

View from our hotel restaurant patio--another beautiful day!

Every morning we have breakfast at our hotel before we hop on the shuttle--it's pretty good and the view is surprisingly pretty nice. Yesterday I had a full out salad for breakfast. Only in China. 

At Andy Murray's match on Lotus.

I watched some of Mathieu v. Andy Murray this morning on Lotus Court. Katie took Murray to his press conference and I later took Djokovic to his press after his win against Gong, a Chinese player. Let's just say I'm a fan.

CCTV flash interview area-- where we pick up players in the Lotus tunnel.

We watch the matches progressing across all ten courts, and sometimes the match end times overlap, which can be hectic--but somehow the officers always make it work. I got to take Dementieva to her interviews after press by myself. I saw Ana Ivanovic and her agent, Gavin, again today, and I was asked to take them to their press conference.  She said she liked my hair yesterday on the way to press, and we got to talking a little bit-- I love her!

Ana Ivonovic on her way to the third round at the China Open. *WTA photo

The first day Katie and I were able to accompany Andrea Petkovic and player staff to a private tennis clinic. On the golf cart on the way to the clinic, she told us funny stories about a friend misinterpreting English, and we were talking about her blogging for ESPN and for "Petkorazzi" She is hilarious... After the clinic a few photographers took photos of her and the little boy she hit balls with. (See below from the WTA website).

A WTA photo of Andrea Petkovic at a tennis clinic.
I was standing just off to the right when this was taken.

This tournament has already seen some amazing players get defeated in the first rounds--especially Jankovic, former #1, and Kuznetsova, who was last year's champion.

Jelana Jankovic after her win over Zakopalova.

It was another great day for men's and women's play, and the press ended slightly earlier than normal because of the official Player's Party that was held at the player's hotel. We got home around 11 pm and were pretty exhausted after work, but I wanted to do some exploring. A kid from the program and I decided that we didn't want to waste anytime here in Beijing--so we went out to walk around the city.

Elevator ad for laundry--I love faulty English in ads. 

We hopped in a cab and just picked an area to walk around and explore. A friend had given me the characters for Sanlitun, where I had gone once before, so we just went for a little night walk to see what we could find. 

A few streets over from the big club scene there are tons of street people selling different types of street food. We just walked around and checked out the local fare--it was very Anthony Bourdain No Reservations of us. 

A whole table of fresh ingredients! Those grey things are squid. 

I had to stop and take a picture of this table--it was full of amazing looking things--from different types of meat and seafood to different vegetables--you pick what you want and the guy grills it up and hands it to you on a stick!  All for 4 RMB. ( $1.00 is around 7 RMB)

This smelled too good for words.

Travis and I both had to stop to watch this guy making some type of crepe-looking thing that smelled Iike an angel brought it down from heaven. 

Street fresh.

We decided we couldn't live with ourselves if we didn't get one. So we acted out our order with our hands, and next thing we knew we were proud owners of the most delicious crepe/veggie/spicy something we both had ever tasted.

This picture doesn't seem as delicious but take my word for it. 

I had another set of characters for a different part of Sanitun on my phone, so we hopped in a cab and showed the driver my text message. He nodded and off we went to see another part of the area!

Stepped out of the cab and into the action!

We found a little strip of bars that was all lit up and just walked around to check out the scene.

We went in solely because it said "Budweiser" outside....

...And surprise--there was a belly dancer! 
Haha! We stayed for a AB beer. 

One beer was huge--didn't know AB made this size! 

View of the scene from our table.

We left after we had our one jumbo beer at the belly dancer place, and walked down the street a little bit. We chose a place and sat outside at another table to check out the people walking by.  Had a great night--so glad we sucked it up and went out to explore Beijing!