First Day of Sightseeing...

Today was a pretty long day… up at 7 (well, up at 1,3,5, and then finally 7…) and then a light breakfast (not that it had to be light… anything and everything that you could want was there…) and then off to Tiananmen Square… Interesting, and people everywhere… (well, there are basically people everywhere all the time… 20M in Beijing means that…) and then off to the Forbidden City… Long, long walk (I think he said about 4 miles…) and it just seems to go on forever… The Emperor was one ambitious guy… 300,000 workers for 14 years to get it done… Took lots of pics (will post when I get back… too much of a pain to do with the phone…) and learned all about that part of China’s history…

Then on to the bus, and a short ride to lunch beside the Bird’s Nest (Olympic stadium…) at a TGI Fridays, of all things… Then another short ride to the Summer Palace (as if the Forbidden City wasn’t enough for the Emperor… he apparently needed a summer retreat for him and the wives (loosely used term there…) We climbed up to the top (in which everyone had to take a breather after…) which had to be a few thousand steps… at least as hard as 20 min on a stairmaster… and then down and a ferry across the lake to the other side… All of the tourist attractions are pretty much one entrance and one exit, and they are miles apart… Very nice there, but it was also very much like the Forbidden City… (big surprise…)

Then a ride to dinner at a very interesting restaurant… “Classic” chinese cuisine… Not what we are used to for chinese food… I tried -almost- everything, and was one of the few that did… the abalone and the sea cucumber not that bad (at least that is what I thought… needless to say everyone else didn’t feel the same…) but the best I can say about the rest was that it was interesting… not bad, just different… very different…

Then finally a short ride back to the hotel, a shower, and off to bed to get ready for the long day tomorrow on the Great Wall… Beijing is a fascinating place, and the people are incredibly nice and polite… Other than the typical peddlers outside the hot tourist spots trying to sell anything and everything (postcards, hats, food, Rolex watches, etc…) it is very nice to walk around… and some parts are very much like a chinese NYC… very crowded restaurants and shops in some areas, and traffic is pretty much a mess… but generally clean and I guess if you knew what you were doing wouldn’t be that bad to get around…