Kathleen the Cubist

Friday afternoon we ventured out for our first real self-lead excursion. We took a cab and the subway to the Olympic Green, in order for Kathleen to swim at the Water Cube. The transportation is all cheap and easy to use. All the subway stops are announced and displayed in English, so getting lost is actually pretty hard to do. We made it up to the Green around 1, and wandered around until the Cube opened at 2. We all passed the temperature test, paid our 50 Yuan each - even though only 1 of the 4 of us was swimming, and then K got her certification card by swimming 2 lengths of the pool. For whatever reason, they didn't allow photography on the pool deck, so anything I may or may not have obtained will have to be shared with you clandestinely.

She swam for about 30 minutes (no authentication whether the potty she used was also used by Dara Torres) before we made our mad dash (thus my hearkening back to days of yore of carrying Josie on my shoulders to the subway station - we had at least 10 people take our picture) back to the hotel for a 4:30 bus. It wasn't supposed to be a mad dash, but a broken vending machine at our subway stop caused us a 20 minute delay, and by the time we got to our ending subway stop, we had to frantically find a cab and tell him to hurry the remaining km or so. Seems this guy knew neither Chinese nor English though, as the card I gave him with our hotel info (in both languages) was of no use to him. Since we've been here several days already, I just told him where to go. Got back at 4:32. No bus in the driveway. No problem though - it was later than we were.