My Birthday Celebration- A very Noodle-y Adventure!

My birthday just happened to be on the Friday after we landed in China (meaning we'd only been here for two days).  Our guide had told us that is customary to eat noodles on your birthday.  We found an awesome French bakery called Paris Baguette where we bought my tiramisu birthday cake.  Our driver picked it up for us after we'd purchased it and he also sneaked some birthday candles into the package.  ;-)

On Friday evening we told our driver that we wanted to go to a restaurant that served noodles (he'd heard the guide tell us about the noodles custom).  He told us that usually you eat your birthday noodles at home but of course we didn't have any (or anything for that matter!).  

Now, Mark and I assumed that it would be super easy to find a Chinese restaurant that served noodles.  I mean, how hard can that be????  We ended up driving around for at least an hour, with the girls falling fast asleep in the back of the van (remember we were still adjusting to the 14 hour time change). Our driver was making lots of phone calls- he was trying to find one restaurant in particular.  We'd almost given up on the noodles for birthday concept and told him to take us to a KFC (yes, Kentucky Fried Chicken!  They have lots of KFCs here!) since we had just passed by one.  Our driver typed "Last Chance" using his Google Translator….and as we turned a corner there was the restaurant he was hoping to find.  I think, after the fact, that he was trying to locate a particular restaurant that serves the traditional birthday noodle dish. I'm still not clear on this.  

We had a lovely noodle meal (we invited our driver to eat with us).  We got a cold noodle dish that was made of noodles, lots of cilantro and fresh tomatoes.  I loved it!  We also had an interesting soup with what they called fish-shaped noodles.  The girls and I called them slug shaped noodles.  Regardless of their shape it was a nice soup.  The girls got pear and apple juice.  I thought it would be juice from a box or bottle but I was wrong!  Their juices came from freshly juiced pears and apples.  Annika declared it to be the best apple juice ever!  >I might need to buy a juicer.< 😉

Beautiful CNY Lights strung across the road

Birthday Noodle Dish with Cilantro & Tomatoes (and that is NOT beer- it's freshly pressed apple juice!)

Afterwards we went home and dove into my tiramisu birthday cake.

My lovely cake. My lovely necklace made by Annika. And a couple of toothbrushes thrown in there for whatever reason. And I got to use my birthday gift for this photo. I got an iPhone and we were playing around with the Instagram app on it. hee hee.

Happy Birthday to Mommy! (PS. This is Kitchen #1)

And next year?  Well, our driver told us that he'd take us home and have his mother cook us the birthday noodle dish.  Much easier than spending an hour trying to find a restaurant.  ;-)  Ha ha ha!  Yes, please!  Actually, I do hope we get to some day meet his family!