Zigga Zagga

Monday: massages at Zig Zag. First we ate lunch at an awesome Greek restaurant that we discovered in the Wudaoying hutong. It was awesome - we got lots of different things, I think my fave was Chelsie's pear salad. Chelsie and I explored the hutong further while her mom and Tina got the massages first (there's only room for 2 at a time). While exploring we discovered a few fun things:

China is all about putting art any and everywhere

The blue door

Advertising plan: giant penguin in the window wearing a hat = genius

Rickshaw with some horsepower! Vrooooooom!

We found a really cool antique-y store

This made me think of home, and my mama, because we have an old sewing machine in the entry-way. Often the answer to a question of "where is" something, was on or in the sewing machine.

 After Chelsie and I got our massages we went to a little tea house that is located just one hutong over that Chelsie and I just so happened to stumble across last week when we were searching for Zig Zag. The lady who works there was so nice and recognized us and called us "old friends" haha. It was cute. She recommended that we sit upstairs on the roof which turned out to be an excellent choice. Tina had been taking videos with Chelsie's camera all day, but then it died.....so I gave her mine and she took this excellent video that captures the true essence of the place....haha:

There was a zucchini growing on a vine hanging off one of the trees and I had to take a picture for my mama:

 The cute little Chinese lady also walked us through the whole process of making the tea. First you put the tea (spices/herbs) into the little brown pot. Then you pour hot water into the pot and swish it around a little bit. This first batch of water is poured into the serving pot and drinking cups to clean them, and then poured into the "rubbish" pot. Then you pour more hot water into the brown pot with the tea in it and let it steep for maybe 10 seconds and then pour it into the serving pot and then into the cups - ready to drink! The lady said we want to make sure to get all the water out of the brown pot because it will destroy the tea if we don't. She also informed us that "normally we would charge you for 3 people (because we got 3 cups), but don't worry, you are foreigners so we will only charge you for one person". It was cute, again. Then you just sit around and drink itty bitty cups of tea and talk about a whole lot of nothing. The green tea, according to the lady, "is served in a glass so you can see the beauty of the leaves". We all tasted it and decided that it tasted like water mixed with grass or green bean juice or something of that sort. Basically it was gross haha. But it was in fact beautiful.  

 Looking up through the treetops we could see flocks of birds swooping all over, presumably eating a yummy dinner of Chinese bugs.

There was also a guy across the rooftops from us tending to his pigeons and he had the most incredible beard I've ever seen! Chelsie said "that is SOOOOO China!" 

 The stairs were CRAZY steep, like it was slightly terrifying trying to walk down them. Tina's a firefighter and her joke of the day also applied to the stairs: "These would NOT pass fire code."

 There were some really pretty birds downstairs....they didn't like having their picture taken.

 On our walk back to the subway we saw some GEESE walking around. Yep, just hangin' out in somebody's back yard. And also some adorable Chinese children. I did the creeper thing and took a picture of them.