Beijing (Day 1)

May 26th

I couldn't sleep. I was up at 4am ready to go. Maybe it was because I slept for 8+ hours on the plane or maybe it was just the excitement of being in China. I couldn't wait. So when the alarm clock finally went off, I was up and running. After a quick continental (American) breakfast, we met up with our new tour guide, Gary, and the rest of the group of 22.

Our First Stop: Beijing Olympic Park
We were able to see the IBM building they built to look like a torch, The Birds Nest & the Water Cube. What is so amazing about all of this is the funding for almost all of the Olympic Buildings were raised by donations. Most donations were made by Chinese individuals & families that do not live in China. CRAZY!

Today we learned that the haze that you see in the pictures is from Coal Plants. This is just a part of the Beijing experience. We were told that during the Olympics, they shut down the plants for periods of time in hopes to clear the air a little. They were also assigned certain days they could or couldn't drive on to reduce car smog. That ended up staying in place even to this day.

We were not able to go into any of these buildings but it was really cool just be there and see them and walk around where all the Olympians were in 2008. They are amazing structures.

We all hopped back on the bus to head towards the Forbidden City & Tiamanmen Square. But our tour guide, Gary had a few stops in mind first. We made a stop at a Pearl Market. They taught us about salt water pearls vs fresh water pearls. It was nice to learn and neat that is was something we learned they did locally (fresh water pearls) but we weren't interested in buying super expensive jewelry.

After our longer then we would have liked stop at the Pearl Market, we headed to Qianmen Street. There was a lot of cool architecture, shops and this is where we ate lunch.

Gary dropped us off here and give us free time to shop and eat. He recommend KFC and McDonalds for lunch! We thought he was crazy and had no plans of eating at an American chain fast food place. Thankfully Gina came to our rescue with her Lonely Planet book. She found us a dumpling place to eat right on Qianmen Street. And it was INCREDIBLE!



The name of the restaurant



We learned a lot from our first dining experience in Beijing. Some quick lessons:

1. Just because the elevator has a particular floor marked with Chinese characters, that doesn't mean that is the floor you are supposed to go to.
2. Some restaurants have you pay as soon as you order instead of at the end of the meal.
3. Don't take the ticket off the table or even move it from the corner or you won't get all the food that you ordered.

 After lunch we made a quick photo stop at the Beijing Theatre. It was such a unique design. If only we had time to see a show in here. That would have been awesome. Maybe next time...

Next we headed over to Tiananmen Square. Wow this place is HUGE! Our tour guide made the joke that it would fit 1 million Chinese or a half a million Americans. We had the opportunity to talk around for a little bit and take it in before we headed into the Forbidden City.



The Square. Hard to capture the size.



National Museum of China (east side)

The Great Hall of People (parliament) (west side)



Monument in front of Mao's Mausoleum (south side)




Forbidden City (north side)

There were people everywhere, tourist and locals alike. It was so amazing to be walking around Tiananmen Square. Time went by quickly and we regrouped and headed into the Forbidden City. It is now opened to the public but before 1925 only the Emperor, family and council were allow in the city.

There is just so much information and history about this place. Every time you turned another corner there was more to see. I guess that is what happens when you build a city with 9,999 1/2 rooms.

We learned that "The Last Emperor", Puyi, became Emperor at 2 years and 10 months old. That is crazy!

After our tour of the Forbidden City, Gary was going to take us back to the hotel on the bus. But it was only about 5pm and Jed, Tim and I were not done exploring the area. From where we left the city gates of the Forbidden City, we could see a lookout at the top of the hill.

So we decided to say good bye to our group and set off on foot to see what we could find. We found Jingshan Park. After a short hike to the top, we were able to get an incredible view of the Forbidden City and a lot of Beijing.

After our time in the park we decided to head back to the hotel. This didn't end up being as easy as we would like it to be. Gary told us not to get a cab near Tiananmen Square or the Forbidden City because they would way over charge us. He recommended us going out the park on the far side, finding a hotel and having them get us a cab. Great idea! In theory... the short version of the story is this...
- wondered aimlessly for a while
- ran up a roaming bill on Tim's cell phone for over $50 in 3 minutes
- found no hotels
- found a cab
- made it back to hotel
- paid too much for a cab

It was such a crazy experience and a great way to get our feet wet for more hiccups the rest of our time here.

But we weren't done for the day. It was still early and there was more to do.

Our next adventure: Dinner
We weren't sure where to go for dinner so we thought we should just ask the front desk. They can speak some English so we were hoping they could tell us a place to go. We asked and they didn't understand anything we said. We pointed to the question in our translation book and they sent us over to the concierge, Ryan. They asked us what we wanted to eat and asked if we wanted Italian! Really? Italian, in China? Of course, we wanted Chinese food. So they recommended Peking Duck. I wasn't a huge fan but I figured Tim and Jed could try duck and they would have something there for me. Ryan walked us out to get us a cab and no cabbie wanted to take us so we asked if there was something that we could walk to. The guy looked shocked! Apparently the foreigners that say at this hotel don't tend to want real Chinese. He told us of a place right across the street. He walked us over there, talked to the people inside, got us a number and menus to look at while we waited. He was so great and a HUGE help. The restaurant was definitely authentic. We were the only foreigners in the place and we got quite a few stares but we didn't care. After quite a wait, our table was ready and the rest of the restaurant was beautiful.


The restaurant

 

The pictures just don't do it justice. There was water under the glass floors, little bridges over little waterfalls, and super fun drapes for individual table privacy. The food was super spicy but really, really good. They had dog on the menu but Jed & Tim just weren't ready to tackle that yet.

We had an amazing dinner and headed out for a little walk before calling it a night. All these little street vendors popped up around the hotel and on bridges. They had random clothing racks that they were selling random articles of clothing, ipod nanos, bootleg dvd's, a ton of different food, some fresh fruits and others were cooking different meat kabobs and tiny little spotted eggs. We looked but didn't buy. After our walk, we were ready to end our first day in China. Had to get a little sleep before our next adventures.