Merediths Birthday

Friday was Meredith’s birthday, but the celebrations were not until Saturday. First stop, the World Trade Plaza, in the City centre. It’s known as being the best hotel in the City and its as good a any four star hotel in England. But its trump card has to be the restaurant, the reason Meredith had chose to go there for her birthday. For 80Yuan, you get to eat the buffet (a little over £5). All you can eat and drink and best of all – its western food. Most of us had hardly eaten all day so we could have eaten a horse (again), the second we sat down, Charlie and I were up again and straight to the steak counter. Pork chops, steak, chicken kebabs, fried pork dumplings all cooked right in front of you. I had to eat a piece of pizza while they cooked the meat, otherwise I may have just eaten it raw.

The buffet was as good as we could have hoped, even though the lager was more akin to apple juice than anything alcoholic, but hey – you get what you pay for I suppose. We ate everything from lasagne to Prawn noodles, it was a culinary extravaganza. After about 1 1/2hours of eating, we went to the hotel that Meredith was staying at. We went to the second top floor, to as close to a penthouse suite I’ve ever been in that’s for sure. It had one of those floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the main street below. It was very reminiscent of a Las Vegas hotel room. So we all sat, listened to music and drank a few bottles of wine that Meredith had brought (the same wine Brock and I had bought her for a present, thinking we were novel, only to find she had bought herself three bottles. At least the thought was there). I was as happy as Larry, please feel free to have another birthday any time you like Meredith.

Sunday came and a few of us decided we needed something as close to a good old fry-up as we could get. Hilary cooked some French toast; Charlie some sausage and mushrooms; I knocked together some scrambled eggs and potatoes with onions – we were sorted. As you can see from the photos, it turned out very well indeed. Our only worry now is that it was too good and that we may now need to eat at the World Trade Plaza every week, followed by a fry-up the next morning. For £5, I think we just might

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