Saturday was a long (not long in a bad way) cold day of sightseeing. We all met in the hotel lobby at 8am to make our way to Tiananmen Square, the largest city square in the world sitting on the longest avenue in the world, if I remember correctly 42km. In my young 12 years old eyes, I saw Tiananmen Square much larger, but it’s still pretty large! I also remembered tons and tons of bikes going through the avenue in front, but it was summer back then so that might be why. So we walked through the square, took a few pictures and bargained a group deal for a souvenir book with a group picture taken professionally.
Then we walked towards the Forbidden City, where we walked for about two hours through layers and layers of walls and interior courts. There were a lot of Asian tourists, actually the majority of tourists were Asian. I suppose western foreigners travel more frequently during the summer months. Walking outside for about two hours already got most of us pretty cold. Some people had to buy gloves and hats from the vendors walking around. Then we ate lunch at a Chinese restaurant, which was very good. Most of us liked it. It was somewhat close to what Chinese food tastes like at home. After lunch we rode the bus for an hour and a half towards the Great Wall. Nap time.
The Great Wall was pretty much like I remembered, but not as steep as I remembered. We entered through the Badaling entrance, which is the most popular. The climb to the peak was quite tough; it started with a smooth walking hill going steeper and steeper until it had to change into stairs, which were not only so steep that all you could see was the heels of the person in front of you, but also uneven steps. The steps are uneven because if the enemies were running on the wall they would trip due to the unevenness of the steps. So note to self: don’t run on the wall. The walk down was just as challenging, in a different way.
After the wall climb, we got back on the bus for the hour and a half ride back to downtown. Nap time again. On the way back, just outside Beijing, we stopped to take pictures of the famous Bird Nest and Water Cube, from the 2008 Olympics. It was very beautiful in person. The whole Olympic village was quite nice.
One thing I learned that I though was very interesting is how the government controls the traffic, or the abundance of cars. I hope I remember all of these correctly. First, to get a license you have to wait, like a lottery, because only 240,000 are issued every year. Second, every day two numbers are picked and if your license plate start with one of these two numbers you cannot drive on the roads, eliminating 20% of the cars driving every day. Third, in Shanghai, it is very expensive to buy a license plate or driver’s permit, sometimes as much as a cheap car. I thought those little facts were pretty interesting. However traffic wasn’t too bad, not must worse than traffic outside New York, but then again it was the weekend, so it could be much worse during the week.
Then, back to the hotel for about an hour and we were out for our welcome dinner at Jasmine. It was a very nice restaurant, which I actually didn’t expect. However, the food was, how should I say, exotic! In another way, it was fancy Chinese food. Yeah, not at all what we eat at home. Jellyfish, lotus roots, frog legs (which I do love, but didn’t want to try them soaking in a bowl of liquid) and many other exotic food. Most of us didn’t eat much, if anything, until they brought out the bowl of noodles – that was delicious. We also kept asking for white rice and they kept saying no! We also had the traditional Peking Duck, that we rolled into pancakes with cucumber and a sauce. Pretty good.
After the restaurant most of the group went out to a club, which I believe is a pretty famous one in Beijing, coming back at all hours of the night: 12:30am, 1:30am, 2:30am…
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