National Day: Happy 60th birthday to the PRC!

Thursday morning started off with a bang, literally - people were setting off firecrackers in the street, which woke me up waaay too early considering we had stayed up late chatting with Azita and Joseph the night before. Amy had deviously invited Azita to see their apartment, planning to have an early surprise birthday celebration.

Azita making a wish on her chocolate “peanut” cake (made by Holly)

Anyway, I stayed in for the morning to avoid all the craziness outside, but around 1 PM, I hopped over to the ferry terminal to pick up Jessica L and Jessica M, two of the Hong Kong ETAs who had come to visit for National Day. We met up with Brian and Mari as well, then headed out to explore what Macau had to offer on National Day.

The first stop was Tap Seac Square, where there were plenty of Mid-Autumn Festival decorations, but there was also a huge open-air concert/carnival going on, with things like mini-car driving and an inflatable obstacle course for the kids (oh, Richfest memories!) I was especially amused by this moonbounce that is supposed to resemble the Guia lighthouse and fortress:

Ta-da!

Between Tap Seac and Senado, we also found this charming side street with cobblestones, Portuguese-style buildings on both sides, and these mildly freaky pinata-style bunny lanterns.

Look into their eyes, I dare you...

They're even creepier up close

At Senado there wasn't much for National Day, besides the big gate that's been there for a while, but we also went up to St. Paul's and saw some more Mid-Autumn Festival decorations there, like this massive lantern:

The top part spins!

Of course, by now I've been to Senado many times, but I still manage to find something new and/or amusing on every visit. This trip's highlight was the sign advertising one of the street shack eateries across from Lemoncello gelato...possibly the least appealing translation EVER:

Eww.

For dinner, we opted to try some Portguese food in Taipa Village, where there are lots of supposedly good restaurants. Our first choice was unfortunately super-crowded, so we ended up at Pinocchio, which opened up their second floor because there were so many diners. The restaurant had a cute menu and nice facility, but pretty mediocre food and absolutely awful service. We asked four times why we didn't get a basket of bread (as everyone around us was), with four different responses:

1) Let me check with the manager.
2) You have to order soup to get bread.
3) We ran out of bread!
4) It's coming, it's coming!

When we finally got our food (we were one of the first tables seated and one of the last to be served), it was pretty disappointing. I had ordered the pork chop rice, thinking it would have a savory sauce soaking through the rice similar to what we had at Fat Siu Lai a couple weeks ago, but instead it was a bowl of rice, with a pan-fried pork chop on top (that was at least 1/3 bone), slathered in ketchup (of all things). Ick. After scraping off most of the ketchup and cutting out the bones, I ate it because I was hungry, but it was still barely palatable.

They need someone to be their conscience

To make up for the bad dinner, we tried to go to the Altira hotel to watch the last night of the international fireworks festival, but the view wasn't that good (too much reflection from the glass) and Austria just failed. As Jessica M. said, "I was expecting the Alps [in fireworks], or at least the von Trapp family!" What we got instead was a rather bad show with awkwardly long pauses (so long that we thought the display had ended twice before the actual finale). It was so clearly the worst of all the entries we had seen, we figured that either Austria had been paired with China on purpose, or they had been paid off or something.

As might be expected, China went all out for their National Day fireworks display, with massive bursts that went even taller than the Macau Tower! All in all, quite an impressive National Day celebration =D