Day 75
Today was the beginning of my China Guide tour. Ashley, Taylor and I left the ship this morning around 9am and went to the subway station and took the subway to the airport. We arrived at the airport pretty early because we weren’t sure how long everything was going to take us, especially because we had no idea where we were going. We sat in the airport and had some Starbucks before we had to board the plane. While we were sitting down, on our computers, two guys from Germany that had just met at the airport came up to us and asked where we were from, when we told them American one guy took out his guitar and played ‘wonderwall’ for us in the middle of the airport, funniest thing ever. We had a 3 and a half hour plane ride to Beijing. On the plane we got served lunch, it was chicken with rice, wasn’t too bad. When we arrived in the Beijing airport we looked for our tour guide and had to wait for everyone to get their bags. There were two tours that came on the same flight and were going to the same hotel, but tomorrow we are going with our own tours. We got to our hotel around 7 and dropped our things off and went out for some dinner. It’s hard because in Hong Kong they spoke a lot of English and it was easy to communicate, but in Beijing they speak NO English, so we just have to point to things in order to communicate. At dinner we ordered chicken, sweet and sour pork, fried rice and an oriental chicken with garlic and we all split them. We then walked around downtown Beijing for a while and it was so cold out! It was probably about 40 degrees, which we definitely aren’t used to, after being in 80 degree weather for three months! We went to the night market which is mainly food. We came across ‘things on a stick’, these things were delicious fruits covered in sugar, but then we also saw snake on a stick, scorpions, and octopus, I didn’t try any of that besides the fruit.
Day 76
We had two wake up calls this morning because we had to be downstairs for our free breakfast buffet at the hotel. After breakfast they put us into our groups and off we went. My group, also known as the Full Beijing Tour, only has 10 people in it and they are all girls! This is perfect, I hate large groups. Our tour guides name is Vivian, well that’s her English name. We got onto the bus and our first stop was at Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. I don’t really know what the significance of either are, but when we went to them they didn’t seem very special, I mean I am sure that it is significant to the Chinese. Tiananmen Square was outside and to me it just seemed like an area that can hold many people, but I think that’s what it’s for, an area that holds many public events. And the Forbidden City was for the emperor and it consisted of many buildings that we walked in. For lunch we had a ‘Peking Duck Lunch’. It is one of Beijing’s famous and traditional cuisines. Its duck that you wrap up in a tortilla type thing and add duck sauce and cucumbers then wrap it up and eat it! I thought it was good but I only had one, we had a bunch of other choices to eat. On the tour the meals consist of a bunch of dishes that we all share. We had everything from chicken, to rice, and vegetables. We then went to the Xiushui Silk Market where we shopped and bargained for souvenirs. Ashley and I did very well, every store we went to and wanted to buy something we bargained the price to be at least 50% less than what they asked for us, a few of them said to us ‘wow you girls are good, tough people’. It must be the business major in us! After a fun filled hour and a half of shopping and buying lots of unnecessary things, we had a two hour drive to the Great Wall! When we got to the Great Wall, we walked up a little and watched the sun set, and then came back down for dinner. Dinner definitely wasn’t as good as lunch, mainly because we found a worm in our corn that was the end of eating for most of us. It was so cold out; we went back to the bus and put on everything we brought to sleep on the Great wall. I had leggings and sweatpants on, 2 pairs of socks and sneakers, a tee shirt, long sleeve shirt, north face fleece, sweatshirt, north face rain coat and my north face vest, a scarf, a hat, mittens and my hood on, I was warm enough in our 20 degree weather. Then before we headed up the Great wall we had to stop and grab the mats and sleeping bags. At this point I am dressed looking like I am going to the North pole, I have my backpack with all my stuff for the night and a sleeping bag and a mat and now I have to hike up to the great wall where we are sleeping. When we got up there, there were soft drinks, beer, water and snacks waiting for us. There were other China guide groups set up, we found our spot on the wall and laid our sleeping bags down and hung out for a while until we went to bed. Sleeping on the Great Wall was amazing, the sky was covered in stars, and there really aren’t enough words or pictures to describe what I saw and experienced. I was warm and slept pretty well, until 430am when Ashley woke me up to go pee, that’s a whole other story. The Great Wall is also known as ‘the longest cemetery’ because so many people had died building it. We had also learned that recently a guy had hiked the whole Great Wall; it took him a year to do it.
Day 77
I woke up this morning on the Great Wall at 6am to the sun rise. It was amazing, we were all exhausted and freezing, and it seemed colder in the morning than it did at night. When we were all eventually awake and willing to get out of our sleeping bags, we got dressed, dropped our mats and sleeping bags off, and then began our hike up the Great Wall. We hiked for 2 hours, it ended up being around 3 miles, it was 15 towers worth. Ashley and I took our time because we didn’t want it to end. By the time we got back down the wall, when I stood still, my legs were shaking on their own; I am going to be sore tomorrow! But now I can say that I slept on the great wall and hiked it for two hours! We drove back to Beijing and went to lunch. Then we went to the official stadium of the Olympics where the opening and closing ceremonies had taken place, we also got to see the swim cube. We weren’t allowed inside either of them because they aren’t open for the public yet, but I got lots of pictures outside. Our last stop of the day was at yet another market. I didn’t spend as much money at this one, thank goodness! We came back to the hotel, Ashley and I waited for the other girls to get back from their tour and we went out to dinner and walked around.
Day 78
Today was an easy and relaxing day, not much went on. We met in the lobby of the hotel around 9, loaded the bus and went to the Summer Palace and walked along the lake. The Palace looked just like the Forbidden City, the way that the buildings were designed and decorated. Then we went to the zoo to see the Panda exhibit, except 2 out of the 3 pandas were sleeping and we saw the third one from a distance, he was just pacing back and forth. After the Panda exhibit we went to the Hutong area, hutong means narrow road way. And the Hutong area is known as the poor area in Beijing. When we got there we were then taken to a Hutong family’s home by rickshaw (these ones were a lot better than India’s) for lunch. They had made us a delicious meal, I would say that it has been one of the best that we have had on the tour, and the chicken dumplings were my favorite. We got back into our rickshaw and had a tour through Beijing’s historic hutongs. We finished the tour by of course shopping around in the local shops. Then we had to hike up 69 steep stairs to the top of the Drum Tower where we saw 25 drums that put on a performance every 2 hours. We walked down bar street that had over 1000 bars and stopped inside Starbucks for some coffee! We are now back at the hotel and have the evening to ourselves. Tomorrow is another long day, and it’s our last day on the tour. In addition to the day, our night was well spent. Ashley and I decided that we wanted Western food, we were SO sick of Chinese food we would rather not eat dinner than have Chinese for the 4th day/night in a row. We really wanted Subway, so we went to the mall right down the road and got wifi and tried looking up where the nearest Subway was. We had no idea what street we were on so our Subway searching wasn’t going as well as planned. It was too hard to ask anyone around the mall where the nearest one was because they spoke little to no English and when we said Subway, they thought that we were talking about the underground subway. We left the mall and decided to just walk down the street until we found a tourist center or a Western restaurant besides McDonalds, KFC, or Pizza Hut. The first thing we saw was a tourist center so we went in and asked for a map, that didn’t help either, so we asked the person at the desk if he knew where the nearest Subway restaurant was. He said that there was one right down the street in another mall. We were thrilled to hear that! When we got to the mall it was huge so we tried finding a directory, but of course there weren’t any around. There were signs hanging and I saw one that said Subway station, and when I saw the Subway I thought that we were in luck, but then I realized it was the wrong thing. As we were walking around aimlessly, we saw a billboard with Subway written on it, we followed where it said to go and we found it! It was the best moment ever, sad I know. It was probably one of the best Subway sandwiches I had ever had, the bread was so fresh. We seriously walked around Beijing for 2 hours looking for a subway, yes we were that desperate. Then we ended the night with some delicious frozen yogurt.
