The Forbidden City
- Absolutely stunning! We hired a tour guide to take us through since it is such a huge place..the entrance has a huge portrait of Mao on it haha... Once you enter you are in the like "officials" section and its a lot of asian style buildings and big open squares! There are no trees in the forbidden city to keep thieves away who could hide in the shadows... then you get into the emperors section of the city... The building throughout are pretty much the same but they are very beautiful! Then there are areas where the Empress lives and the concubines (spelling???) live...There are 9,999 rooms in the forbidden city...
Silk Street
-shopping! Annoying vendors who keep yelling and you and trying to pull you into their stores...
The Temple of Heaven
-hugee place with lots of asian buildings and big park areas...Really pretty
Pearl Market
-More shopping! Tons of cheap pearls...so they may be fake like everything else here
Olympic staduim
-Soo cool...I expected it to be much bigger but it was cool to go sit on the field and be in the stands of the Bird's Nest... The stadium is soo cool and itwas awesome to be where history was made! The water cube was a pretty cool building too although we didnt get to go in.
The Great Wall - Simatai to Jimshanling 10km hike
- By far the best thing i have done here...It was absolutely gorgeous and so amazing how grand it is in the middle of nowhere...Itmakes me feel bad for everyone that had to lug those bricks up the wall.. All men were summoned to create the different section of it and were though of as heros for helping to build it! Those that died during the bulding were buried inside the walls.. The portion we hiked separated mongolia from China... WE had our hostel book the trip for us since the section we hiked was 3 hours by bus north of Beijing so we were basically one of 15 people on the wall and we didnt cross paths will really anyone while hiking! It is one of the least touristy spots so that made it even more amazing! It was probably the hardest hike i have ever done... 10 km of constant up and down and endless stairs and hell basically but sooo worth it in the end... It took us about 4 hours to complete the 10km section remaining of this part of the wall...This is what i get for travelling with 3 guys haha...but I am soooo glad I did it and it is still so unreal that I actully got to climb the great wall... Can't wait to upload my pics!
Summer Palace
- Today we went to the summer palace which is basically a hugee park and lake area...Soo beautiful! The emperors would come to this palace when the Forbidden City would get too hot... It is hugeee... we walked the perimeter and it was so beautiful all around with big bridges and lakes and it was raining pollen so it had a little charming effect like it was snowing... There were more really cool asian style buildings and temples along the way... It was a nice long walk and relaxing after yesterdays great wall adventure!
The only downfall thus far have been the Squatter toilets(yuck) and the Asian tourists who greatly greatly outnumber foreign tourists...They come in huge groups everywhere so places get really crowded when a few groups come...i am surprised at how little i see foreigner travellors but it has been nice to be thrown into beijing...thankgoodness for the guys cause I would be sooo lost here, especially using the subway...
I will update as soon as i get a chance!
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