We started in Beijing. The historical city to the country. I got to the hotel (thanks for Chen picking me up at the airport) at 3:00am and our tour started the next day at 8:30am...and our 1st day was huge. Went to the summer palace where the dynasty would stay. Heard about the horse wife and all the concubines, took a boat cruise and saw the marble ship. One of the emperors would say that "the boat was like the emperor and the water the people - The emperor needs the water to be support but can also be overturned." I thought it was a good analogy.
Then it was onto the Tiananmen Square to see all the government buildings. Lots of cameras around the place. Felt like I was in Orson Wells' 1984.... Also saw the building of Mao and then onto the Forbidden City. There were so many of the same red buildings I wasn't sure when it would end...and it seemed like it wouldn't - but then it did and we went home.
Anja, Nathan and I went to the hotel bar and drank - almost $7 a beer which is expensive in China. Luckily we met and Irishman (forget his name) but he picked up our tab which was great....but the next day started early...and I was not okay with that. But we went to the Great Wall - which was excellent.
...so when I think of the Great Wall I think of rolling hills and easy pathways, but the portion of the wall that they took us to was like Red Rocks (or Mount Lofty) - literally just a steep climb of stairs...and there was always more to try to rock up.
Then we headed to the Hugtong - the oldest part of town. Very smelly and the worst bathrooms. But we took the rickshaw through the city and went to an old house. Learned how to cut paper (made the double happiness symbol) and tried the bathrooms (although I wouldn't suggest it).
Late night was the meat market...eeeuuuyyyy gggrrrrooooosss. But awesome at the same time. We walked up and down the market and it was disgusting. Some of the most gross stuff on sale to eat. There were scorpions, seahorses, millworks, sheep penis', star fish and a bunch of other weird crap. Of course I did not try anything, but my good friends did. First was the scorpions which they said tasted like salty popcorn kernels...then the seahorses which tasted like fishy salty popcorn kernels..."Oy". Needless to say I did not eat much for dinner that night.
On our last day, we stopped by the Beijing Olympic stadium. It was pretty cool to see where Phelps won all of his gold medals, but really just a tourist picture taking site.
Next up Xi'an.
No comments:
Post a Comment