Weekend in Xiamen part 5

Zhongshan Park is at the end of Zhongshan Road, so we already knew how to get there. Zhongshan Road is pretty easy to get to since it is the main tourist area of the island and is probably the most popular shopping street in the entire city.

Neither of us wanted to go back to Zhongshan Road, but I wanted to see the park. Ryan reluctantly agreed.

Zhongshan Park was not the most exciting place in the world, but it was a nice, clean place to take a walk. Pretty much the opposite of Zhongshan Road. The shopping street was dirty, loud and far too crowded. The park was clean, relatively quiet and almost empty, at least when we were there. It was not strictly empty. There were probably hundreds of people there, but anything in China with less than a million people is empty.

The highlight of the trip for both of us was the grocery store. That might seem strange, but I am still impressed by how many American items this store had. People visiting from the United States would not care. It is a tiny shop compared to American supermarkets. Since we live far away from the United States and real American food is hard to find, this store was a blessing to us.

I liked one of the two Italian restaurants, but Ryan's favorite food in Xiamen was pizza. Our hotel, aside from being in a good location, had a Papa John's in the courtyard. They even delivered to our room, which is a small price to pay for mediocre pizza.

It's easy to find better pizza in Hong Kong. Pizza Express is not bad and Paisano's is quite good. Ryan has neither in Fuzhou. His pizza choices are Pizza Hut and Chinese pizza. Frozen pizzas are better than Pizza Hut and no one from Italy or New York would recognize Chinese pizza as pizza. The first time I saw a Chinese pizza, I asked someone what it was. They said it was pizza and I laughed. I thought they were joking.

Papa John's is enormously flawed, but it is better than Pizza Hut and much closer to what most of the world calls pizza than Chinese pizza. The housekeeping staff at our hotel had to pick up a lot of pizza boxes.