China Part 2

Sorry for the long delay in writing about the rest of our trip. Obviously, Kevin is much better at keeping up at this then I am....

So the next morning we headed off to the airport. We successfully took the subway all the their. Did we mention we love subways! So quick, so convenient, so cheap.  We arrived in Beijing at two, and made our way through the airport.  An interesting thing I noted right off the plane, now that we were in mainland China, we were literally told were to stand in line for the tram. This is not like most place were people go where they wanted and pushed onto the car. Someone was standing, herding people into orderly lines. This was not true everywhere, but it really stood out as one of the first experiences we had as we got off the plane. 

Once we got our bags and got through customs, we tried to have a tourist desk help us get to our hotel via subway. We wanted to be able to get there ourselves taking mass transit instead of a taxi. They seemed a little confused and told us basically we would have to take a taxi eventually. Luckily, we were surprise as we walked out of the airport to see our friend Albert waiting for us. We had not expected to see him yet, since he wasn't allowed to drive that day. (Beijing just reinstated a law that limits what days people can drive according to their licence plate number.) Apparently he had taken the bus in and so we hopped into a taxi and went straight to the hotel. This turned out to be great thing in many ways. First, we now realize, we had not booked a typical tourist hotel. It was far from downtown and in fact pretty far from the subway and no one at the hotel spoke English.  We did really enjoy the hotel, it was nice and clean with friendly people, but we probably wouldn't recommend it for non-Chinese speaking tourist.  Second it was a time saver not taking the subway and bus and getting lost, so we were able to get to Beihai park that afternoon. We were a little worried we wouldn't make it since things close pretty early. I think the park stops admitting people at 4:30. 

Thanks to Albert getting us checked in quickly, we did make it to the park, where we walked around for an hour or two and took some nice pictures. Then Albert kindly took us out to dinner. We picked a nice Thai restaurant we were all happy with. Actually, it was rather funny how Albert unknown to us, bought us dinner. He got up to go to the bathroom, and came back a few minutes later. Then Kevin decided to go, and asked Albert if it was just around the corner. Albert said yes, and as Kevin walked away, he had a funny grin on his face. When Kevin returned and we were ready to pay and go, Albert told us he had already paid. We then realized he had never gone to the bathroom, but used that as an excuse to pay the bill. It was very kind of him, and we were able to pay him back by buying him dinner on our last evening in Beijing. 

The next day we had tons of plans. We were going to get up early, and take a taxi to the Forbidden City, walk through there, check out Tian'anman Square, then we were going to take a taxi out to the Summer Palace. The next day were planning on going to the Great Wall, and I assumed that would take all day and we would be tired. So we set out from our hotel early to get a taxi to the Forbidden City. It was rush hour and we had a hard time getting a taxi, so instead of standing around waiting, we decided to tray and walk to the Subway. Albert already told us it was far away, but we were feeling adventurous, and like I said, we love the subway. So off we went on a little adventure. I think it took us a hour and half to find it. On the way, we walked through a local market, bought some gloves there (it was a cold walking around!) which was a good $5 investment for us. We started getting a little frustrated and had to find a bathroom somewhere in there. Anyway, by the time we got to the subway, it was a little late to follow our original plan, so instead, we took the subway straight out to he Summer Palace and spent the rest of the day walking around there. We had a great time, walking at our own pace, enjoying the gardens and lake (something we don't get to see in Mumbai).  After 3 or 4 hours walking around in the park, we got back on the subway (after an interesting, non-registered taxi drive) and went to downtown to find something to eat. We ended up walking around Wangfujing which had lots of stores, some big brand names and other small shops. We went into a silk shop and walked around looking at all the different patterns and clothing items they had. They also had tailors ready to measure you for a new outfit. Finally we went to Outback Steakhouse for dinner. man we were excited! As much as we liked China, we did not dig the food. The Outback was actually really good and tasted exactly like it would have in the US. After hours of walking around, we headed back to get a good nights rest before going to the Great Wall.

The next day, we again got up early and headed off to the bus station. We planned on following the directions in our tourist book, which explained how to get the bus from Beijing to another small city, where we could find a mini-bus or taxi up to the part of the wall we wanted to see. The trip up was suppose to take 2:30-3 hours. We hoped to arrive by 11, walk around for 2-3 hours, and then take the trip back, getting back around 4 or 5pm. So as soon as we arrived at the bus station, looking just like the tourist we were, someone approached us and asked if we were going to Mutianyu. In halting English and pictures drawn on paper and pen he had ready, he explained how hard, long and expensive it would be to do what we were planning, and that he would drive us straight there for a reasonable price. Kevin did a little bargaining, which made the driver laugh hysterically, we think because we were not quite as naive as he thought, and we struck a deal. I'm sure we payed a lot more than the bus would have been, but it was money WELL spent! The drive took us only 1 hour and was so much less stressful then the other way would have been. Our driver was very very nice. He helped us buy the right tickets and told us what to avoid (aka buying things from the vendors at the wall).  We took a tram up to a section of the wall, and then walked from there. We spent a leisurely 3 hours walking, taking pictures and generally enjoying ourselves. Then it was back to Beijing. We were back by 1pm, not nearly as tired as we thought, so we decided to go to the Forbidden City that we missed the day before. 

Again we walked around the city at our own pace. As we left, we enjoyed a beautiful sunset over walls of the Forbidden City, then headed out to dinner. Over dinner we were trying to decide what to do on our last day. We had plans to meet Albert at his school at 1pm, so we had all morning to do whatever we wanted. There were several other things in town we could have seen, but we would have had to take a taxi ride into town, toured around, gone back to the hotel to check out and then take another taxi to meet Albert. Spontaneously, because we were on vacation after all, we decided to sleep in! 

However, we did decide before going home for the evening, we would try and take the subway out to the Olympic stadiums. That took several transfers, and when we got to the change station to go to the stadium. It looked like it wasn't open. We were tired and very disappointed, but we finally looked around enough to find the one way down to the cars that would take us to the Stadiums. Part of the reason it was hard to find was because there was no one going there. When we got on the car, there was only three other people on it. It was a little strange, but fun to be in a whole subway car practically to ourselves. Plus it was so nice and new, being built for the Olympics. Once we got there we were very impressed. It defiantly felt "Olympic". There were quite a few more people there then on the subway. Enough that we didn't feel alone, but there was lots of space and opportunity to take pictures. One family laughed at me as they walked by because I was trying to pretend to swim in front of the water cube and kept loosing my balance. We also saw a pug there! Of course, our pug is so much cuter, but it was fun to see a Chinese pug in China. We got great shots of everything all light up at night. Finally we headed back to our hotel for a good, LONG night of sleep. 

We did sleep in quite a bit, had a late brunch, checked out and then hopped in a taxi to meet Albert.  I have to say our whole time in Beijing would have been very different if it were not for his help. When we first arrived he had printed out a google map of where our hotel was, in Chinese. This came in handy, as most taxi drivers don't speak or read English, so we could just show them the map and off they would go. The other thing he helped us with is finding maps.  On our first night when we went to the park and dinner, we stopped in a tourist shop and found little maps of the city. They had major places, the subway and a general outline of the city. I had the great idea of picking up one in English and one in Chinese. That way were able to find what we wanted in English, and locate on the Chinese map. We used this method several times trying to get to places like the Summer Palace and the bus station. Again, though, it was great to have Albert help point things out and gives us ideas of where to go and when to go. 

When we met up with Albert, he showed us around Tsinghua University and Tsinghau high school which is where Albert teaches. He also showed us around Peking University which is basically next door. It's a little like touring around Boston as these two universities are the equivalent Harvard and MIT. After a while, we stopped at a grocery store to buy snacks for the train ride and headed off to the train station. We thought it was a little strange to leave for the train station 3 hours early even though we only had to be there 20 minutes before the train left. It did take an hour and half or more to get there, but once we were there, we bought him dinner and then he helped us get on the train and off to Shanghai.

And that was our time in Beijing. I would write about our one day in Shanghai, but we did have a rather fun adventure, and I'm afraid if I write now, I won't do it justice, since I have already spent the last hour writing. For now I am done... to be continued again.

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K & E