Beijing Day 3 - Part II

This afternoon we decided to venture out on our own with a taxi. We headed to the Hard Rock Café. We had intended to go for lunch earlier, but the restaurant had been closed for a wedding. Apparently this happens often because if you look at the schedule on their website, "They are Tying the Knot" is on the calendar regularly. At any rate, they opened the doors to the public at 3:00. We arrived at about 3:30 and had a very nice meal.















After our meal, we took a taxi back to our hotel and napped for a couple hours. It was glorious. :)

We'd purchased tickets to the "Legend of Kung Fu" shoe earlier in the day. The show started at 7:30 so we thought if we headed down to the lobby looking for a taxi an hour ahead of time we'd be in good shape. Well, it's a good thing we planned ahead, because apparently trying to get a taxi during the 6:00 hour in Beijing is next to impossible. We were finally able to make it happen and we arrived at the show with plenty of time. We had decided to leave the camera at the hotel because we knew photography wouldn't be allowed during the performance. We didn't count on some of the before and after shots being available. We just snapped a couple with Ron's iPod.





The show was very entertaining and the athletic ability of the performers was phenomenal. You all know how observant Hope is and how she processes things with such sensitivity. Well, the story of this young boy, Chun Yi being left at the monastery to study the Buddhist way of life, etc. was not missed. We had a few tears when Hope was processing the future of Chun Yi bring without his mother/family. When it was all said and done and once we finagled Beijing taxis at night trying to get a ride home, we all decided that we enjoyed the show very much.

Time to SLEEP! Our ride to the airport will be here to meet us at 10:00 tomorrow morning.

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Beijing Day 3 - Slow Day

This is what goes on in our room at about 3:30am when a certain young lady wakes up. You can see she is still in her clothes from yesterday. When we got back to the room last night we tried everything to wake her for a bit of dinner and to get her pj's on, but she was having none of it. So sleep in her clothes she did.





This is what it looks like at breakfast time in our hotel restaurant. Hope has done awesome with meals. She has tried everything, and liked most of it. I think her favorite this morning was the soup.











We walked down to the "Silk Street Market" and did a tiny bit of shopping. We know not to buy too much here in Beijing and we don't want to weigh down our luggage, but we got a couple things. At any rate, we stopped for a quick bite to eat and. This gentleman outside out window drew quite a crowd. It was rather comical watching people watch him.


Well, we are off to find a taxi. Hopefully I'll have another update tonight.

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Great Wall Hike

Here is a google maps picture of our hike on the Great Wall. You can see the wall and three of the towers we hiked to.



Start of our Great Wall trek was 40.43101 N 116.55765 E

Cable chair lift up to Wall 40.43254 N 116.56390 E

Hike on the wall to 40.43568 N 116.56187 E

Our hotel is Jinglun located at 39.90752 N 116.44799 E

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Location:40.43101,116.55765

Beijing Day 2

6:30 pm here on Friday night as I type this. We've been back from our long tour day for a while. Ron has had some time to run out and get some water and a bit of KFC chicken for dinner in our room tonight. We have on EXHAUSTED young lady here.

Interesting tidbit...
On yesterday's tour, we had people from England, Australia,and India with us.

Today we had England, Manchuria (I think), Bulgaria (but currently living in CA), Spain, Germany, and Canada. We were a very diverse group!

We were picked up this morning about 7:15. To say we had a full day was an understatement for sure. We started with the Forbidden City.








(yes it is HOT - We were thankful it was overcast today. I can't imagine surviving a day like we had if it had been sunny.


Up next was Summer Palace. This calligrapher was just hanging out on the sidewalk doing his thing.


Beautiful lotus flowers all along the walkway.


The walkway at the Summer Palace was presented to us as the longest covered walkway in the world at 738 (?) meters. It has over 14,000 paintings similar to the one below lining the ceiling it's entire length.


We ended our time there with a dragon boat ride across the lake. Hope helped pay for our ride.








We are getting these little hand hearts every time one of us asks for a picture these days.


Lunch was at a pearl market. First a demo....


...then we eat.


After lunch our guide took us to a silk factory. Always remember all the thread for clothing, etc, comes from single cocoons. BUT, the quilts are made from the silk of double cocoons. I need to look through some of the video from our tour to check these numbers, but I think if the thread was unwound from one cocoon, it's length is something crazy like 1500 meters. I forget how many cocoons it takes to make one silk layer for the quilts, but then each quilt has 75-80 layers. Cool

Silk Worms


Cacoon


Stretching the Silk


Temple of Heaven was up next.


Entertainment at the Entrance - Interesting Instruments


Hope with Liu Liu our guide for today.


Lastly for today - Tea Ceremony
Mmmmmm! Jasmine Tea


And so ends day two. We are pretty worn out. Our bodies haven't adjusted to the time yet. Hope woke up this morning wide awake at 3:00. She has been a remarkable traveler! She fell asleep n the bus ride back to our hotel at about 6:00 and she has not yet woken up. We couldn't even wake her to feed her some dinner...and if you know Hope, she is ALWAYS hungry. Hopefully she'll just sleep through the night now. One can wish such things, yes?

Have a great day at home. You'll all be just waking up to start the day I suppose. Hope all is well. Has it continued to be stifling high temps there too? Have we had any rain?

Beijing Day 1

Pic from our walk this morning...


On our way!


(8:10 pm Thursday night as I'm typing)

We had a fun day today. We had a little more time than expected this morning before we had to be ready to than we expected. So we started out with a stroll to check things out. It was a pretty gloomy day today. I didn't expect to see much of the sun while we were here, but today was exceptionally gray. We even had to bring our raincoats along for the tour. We visited a different section of the wall than we did during our last trip. We were at the Mutianyu section this time. It really was beautiful, but I wish that visibility has been better so we could've enjoyed the views a bit more. I'll have to search images to find some good pictures of that section of the wall.

Crazy Vendors!





It was fun to ride the chairlift up the mountain. Hope even did great with that. She has done amazingly well so far this trip! What a sweetheart. She fell asleep twice on the tour bus this afternoon.

One of the fun perks of visiting this section of the wall is the opportunity to take an alpine slide down the mountain when you're finished exploring. I think there was a certain someone here who was pretty disappointed the slide was closed due to the rainy conditions today. That someone may just have to bring his son back here with him someday for another chance. :)

A couple snapshots...You can see just how overcast it was this morning with a pretty constant drizzle.








Crazy men who coerce you into taking pictures with them and then beg for $$. We saw this coming. Ron gave them what amounted to about $2 and we just kept walking. Cute pictures though.





After a couple hours trekking up and down the wall, our guide took us to the Chinese medical center that apparently played a pretty important role in the Olympic games. They had a display of chairs that the diplomats had used when they were spectators at the various events. We were all treated to a brief foot massage. Then, the doctors were paraded in to try to convince us to take advantage of some of their herbal medications and therapies to treat whatever ails us. No worries. We left empty handed. HA!

On our way back to the hotels we had the chance to drive by the Olympic village, bird's nest, and water cube. I guess both of the big buildings have ticketed tours for those who are interested. The big stadium is now being used for concerts and the occasional soccer game. Our driver from the airport told us the water cube has been turned into a kids water park.


Hope with our guide Angel (a.k.a Miss Wong)


Time to wrap up for the night. We have another big day tomorrow. Here is my favorite family photo from the day.


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First Pics off the Camera

Wanted to just share a little update. We are waiting to leave for our Great Wall your, I thought I'd pull a few pics.

Here is the stash that is going to get us through the next two+ weeks. I was pretty impressed because our big bags are at the appropriate weight for China in country travel. Also, we only checked the two large bags. We were able to carry everything else with us on the plane. We didn't even need a checked bag for Hope. So, this time we are definitely more efficient with our packing.



Here are a couple more pictures of our departure. Thanks again for the ride Grandma and Grandpa!









We were up at our usual time this morning of 5:30. YIKES! We are probably going to crash hard tonight after our tour. We wanted to go out to a market this morning to buy some water to have in our room, but nothing is open until 9:30 or later so I guess we'll have to figure it out when we get back. We did manage to find a geocache though. :) (GC2KQWP "Close to the Silk Market")


Also on our walk we saw these flowers. Guesses?


One last smile from the lobby of the Jinglun Hotel


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