Day 1
Our flight to Beijing was uneventful. We had a four hour layover in Toronto from Cleveland. The one cool thing worth noting was that in the international terminal, all of the sitting areas had two iPads on a each table. You could order food or drinks, check flights, or surf the the web. All was free to use and the internet was fast, much faster than getting the free wifi onto my own ipad.
We navigated the subway fairly easily in Beijing to our hotel. We had to make three transfers, but only cost ~$4 per person for the ride.
We both were exhausted even though it was 7:45 pm when we got to our room. We unpacked and hit the sack by 8:15.
Day 2
Early rise! We both were wide awake at 3:00 am. We got up, KT went to the gym and I tried to get the wifi and safe to work. After success, I joined KT. It was actually surprised at the facilities. An easy place to get the heart rate up and stretch after a 13 hr flight the day before. We both successfully fell back asleep from 5-7.
We decided to jump right in to the Chinese food culture and skipped the $30 Western hotel breakfast for authentic across the street. We thought we ordered the doughnut looking item, but ended up just with the soup. Which by the way was made from a fish broth and had little prawns in them with fish filled dumplings. It was surprisingly okay. We also got tomato scrambled eggs and some other random dumplings. It was better than I originally thought it would be, but I knew it was going to be a rough breakfast week.
We started the day off at Tiananmen Square, where yes just two days prior there was a terrorist attack. This is hard to confirm with Communist China able to control the media's message. There was no signs of any problems, fires from the days prior, or anything. If we hadn't read the news we would have never known. There were tons of police officers and military around, but nothing I didn't expect. Either way, the entire city feels safe to walk around and check out all of the sights Beijing has to offer.
The Square was enormous as expected, but the Forbidden City was more impressive. The space was huge and it was awesome to see things built (and rebuilt) from the 1600s. It was beautiful despite there being a solid coat of dust on everything. It was interesting that you could physically touch soo much as much of the city was not preserved as you would expect.
We both were hungry for lunch, but the smell of fish didn't make much appetizing. Additionally, we were in a more local area of town with no English translations on the menu. We decided to wait in a long line for nuts. We managed to order a bag of cashews and peanuts despite no one around knowing English. It continues to amaze me how we can communicate what we need by simply pointing and making gestures.
We made an impromptu decision to jump on a rickshaw and tour a hutong (back alley) which is how the people lived in Beijing for centuries and many still do. This was an unbelievable experience as this is where some of the impoverished reside out of sight from the main road. It was filthy and dirty, but eye opening. The craziest thing was that you would see one nice car sitting outside of each residence, Audi A6 seemed to be popular. There was soo much pollution and dust in the air, it was hard to imagine clothes actually being clean that we're hanging to dry. It appeared that most residents shared one community bathroom, which was ironically the nicest part of the hutong from the outside. The ride couldn't come quick enough. It was on our list to do, but I was happy when it ended. It left you feeling a need for a shower.
We took the mile walk back to the hotel as we spent our remaining cash on the the rickshaw. We decided to get some chores accomplished. I had ordered a Chinese SIM card from some random front hotel staff member. The guy was great. He even ran back and exchanged for a micro SIM card for my iPhone 4S. Verizon was able to have Apple unlock my phone temporarily while we are out of the country. I now have a Chinese cell phone! This was important so we can call our driver tomorrow when we want to be picked up from the Great Wall.
We had learned from watching Samantha Brown's travel show on the airplane that there were some cool evening markets. The one extreme market was only two blocks from our hotel. Here we could have eaten deep fried starfish, snakes, sea horses, all kinds of insects, and many unrecognizable items. Many of the insects were moving right before they were cooked. I would have tried something, but there was no guarantee that I wouldn't get sick. It wasn't worth the gamble. We watched others eat these while we tried a dough like ball which tasted like a carnival elephant ear.
All excursions are booked. Full day at the Great Wall tomorrow, followed by five hour bullet train to Xian the following day to see the Terra-cotta Warriors before heading to Shanghai.
I do want to note that Facebook and social media is blocked in China, which means that tourists are included. This seems to be the only Communist "rule" that I have noticed thus far in our trip.
Update: they allow social media in Southern China. I am guessing this was canned to encourage business in Shanghai.
Pictures to come once they all load. Only 7 did overnight.
Posted with Blogsy
No comments:
Post a Comment