Relaxing Day and American Food

Sunday was a nice lazy, laidback day. I finished up my laundry and hung up the damp items and then headed out to find a place with free and hopefully fast wireless. My buddy Sara needed to download some music from Itunes for her new Ipod to use on her trip to India. We were looking for a place called Steak and Eggs in the embassy district of Beijing. I had the address in Chinese, but our taxi driver was not familiar with it. Often when drivers don’t know the address, they will just drop you out wherever you’re at.

After several phone calls, he felt like he knew well enough where we were going. However, he didn’t get us very close and we wandered around for about an hour trying to find the right street. Finally we located the street but could not get there because the US embassy had every street blocked from where we were to get to where we wanted to go. After several attempts to walk around, we finally got to the part of the street we wanted and found the restaurant right away.

The menu was made up of standard diner fare with a nice selection of pies and cakes. I ordered a mushroom and cheese omelet with home fries and wheat toast, my usual. The omelet was tasty and cheesy and the potatoes were good, too. Only one strange moment happened with the toast. After putting jelly on my toast, I noticed that the butter was actually garlic butter, but that was a small thing. Everything else was tasty.

After dinner, we tried to get online with no success at Steak and Eggs. So we walked a short way down the street to a little coffee bar on the corner called Nut Hut. We were the only people there and the wifi worked well. Also the guy working, who may have been the owner, was really nice and but not pushy, a rare find here. His name is Yossarian, like from Catch-22.

We ordered drinks and settled in to surf the web and get Sara some music. We ended up staying here for six hours. I also bought a great picture that the guy working there had taken. He does the type of photography in the shop as hobby and works as a photographer for magazines in town. I got his card, but I think I will ask if he can sign it if we go back to eat at Steak and Eggs again. I was really happy to be able to communicate to him that I wanted to buy the photo especially given my almost complete lack of Chinese skills. His English was way better than my very limited Chinese.