Yantai City, China

We spent last weekend just kicking around in lovely Yantai city with friends. Yantai is known as the "city of the double sea" in China, because it is at the tip of the Shandong peninsula with the Bohai Sea to the west and Yellow Sea to the east. We took in the sights downtown--the old lighthouse and the quays, and then enjoyed ourselves at Tashan Park, which is on the mountain just up the road from the school where we teach. The gondolas go up to the pagoda pavilion at the top, where the monkeys like to hang out. The bumper cars were pretty fun, although anyone who has ever spent any time on a road in China will wonder why the Chinese need an amusement like bumper cars--their normal driving habits are pretty much what most of us would think of as bumper car worthy.