Moved Hotels and Olive Garden

I moved hotels today. I am now in a Somerset, which is an extended stay hotel. I have a one bedroom apartment that has a kitchen and washer/dryer. I'm not sure how that's going to work yet. The machine does both functions in the same compartment, and the labels are all in Chinese. It should be an interesting first load. It's nice to be in something bigger than a hotel room. They also give you a DVD player to use, and just installed LCD TV's. All and all, it's a nice set up. The hotel is located in the Zhongshan Square. This area has a lot more choices for restaurants and shopping.

The lady that checked me into the hotel, Susan, told me there was a supermarket near by. I was excited for that, because I wanted to stock my fridge with water and pop. She was kind enough to walk me to the store. She was a really nice lady and we headed out.

She took me on a short cut through some alleys. The alleys were not clean at all. They reminded me of Gangs of New York. I was expecting Bill The Butcher to climb out at any moment...thought I was at The 5 Points! The worse part was there were spots where I almost couldn't breathe! It smelled so bad. We passed what looked like it might have been an old garage. This was the source of most of the alley's trouble. It was filled with rotting garbage! It was horrible. Susan didn't even give it a second thought!

The moral of this story? Stick to the main streets, no shortcuts, walk around the block! It was so bad that when we came back, I made up a story to take a cab for the two block ride....just so we wouldn't walk through that alley again!

I don't mean to make it sound like it's that way everywhere, because it's not....if you come though, do yourself a favor, don't take a Chinese shortcut. You'll thank me later!

After the trip to the grocery store, I found out there was an Olive Garden down at the corner...or as Susan called it, "Oliver Garden".

She said it was the same as in America. So I decided to check it out, because I just couldn't believe that this was possible. I got down there....it was not a real Olive Garden...but I liked the bootlegging of the name! I decided to try it just because of that....you have to appreciate the effort!

I ordered lasagna. I got a square that somewhat resembled lasagna, but it lacked the taste. Actually, there was no taste. It was a tasteless square. It was also overpriced for quality and portion...at least that part of Olive Garden they got right!