Beijing

We finally made it to Beijing yesterday.  We booked through a tour company which booked our hotel, driver and tour guide for 3 days.  It was a little bit of an adventure when we arrived at Beijing airport.  After the numerous flights that I've done over the years (Percy even more) we rarely ever get a chance to see our names on a board or something like that when we get off a plane.  I think I've had it done once or twice, and I think it was in India.  Anyways we were told that our tour guide would be waiting for us with a sign as we left the luggage hall.  Nope… no names or tour guide.  It's a good thing we had our cell phone still and the tour guides cell phone as we were able to figure it out that she was at the wrong terminal.

Given time constraints we went straight to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City.  Tiananmen square is famous for it's protests in 1989 where some student protestors were killed by the Chinese Army.  The square is the largest open air city square in the world.  The square is basically a lead in to the forbidden City.

The forbidden city was busy as it was a Sunday.  Lots of Chinese tourists.  They seem to be every where.  The forbidden city was the residence of the emperor of China. Lot's of colourful buildings and gates are within the walls of the city.  Little things, such as the number of animals on the roof, indicate the importance or greatness of that building.  As did size.  More important buildings were much larger then the less important ones. From north to south it's about 1km in length and from east to west I think it's around 800m.  It was great to see one of China's most famous tourist sights.

Last night we also decided to walk around to see what Beijing was up to.  Our hotel was close to a famous walking street call Wangzhiou or something like that.  I can't really remember. Again, my friends mentioned to me that I should try the Peking Duck while I'm here.  So we found this restaurant that looked like it would be foreigner friendly.  Sure they were nice enough, but they spoke almost no English at all.  It was hard enough to explain to them that we want two bowls of rice.  I think my Chinese sucks so bad as I thought I was ordering rice the guy looked at me like I'm crazy.  Even a coke was tough to order.  Thank goodness the menu had photo's and English translations, but the translations were literally what the Chinese name converted to English.  So something like heavenly beef to make you sizzle, lol, or something like that.  A description for beer was like yellow hair flowing in the wind.  Okay so I'm making these up but the menu was really something like that.  All the food that came out was really good.  The Peking duck came last which sucked as we were almost full.  But one of the cooks came out with it on a cart and started to slice it up in front of us.  We had the flour wraps, onion, cucumber, and sweet sauce to go with it.  All really tasty and even Percy enjoyed it.  I Percy that they normally do something with the leftover meat on the bones but I wasn’t sure what they'd do here.  Sometimes in Toronto we get it stir fried with some other stuff and we eat the filling with lettuce wraps (Or I am thinking of something totally different??).  Anyways we didn't think anything else was going to come so just before we asked for the bill a soup came out with the rest of the duck meat.  It actually looked decent.  It might have even been congee like as I thought I saw some rice, cabbage and duck floating around in there.  We told the waiter that we were full and didn't want it, I think he understood.  We even think a few of the waiters were eyeing it so they could eat it.

After dinner we walked along the walking street and saw some interesting food "stalls".  They were serving up squid, meat, or fruit on skewers.  They also had dumplings, stews, soups, and maybe even stinky tofu.  Percy looked a little ill from it so we didn't hang out too long.  I actually wasn't feeling too well myself but it might have been from dinner.  As I write this in the morning my stomach feels a little better but I'm skipping breakfast today as I don't want to get sick while at the Great Wall.

When I get a chance I'll throw up some photos, but we'll see as this internet connection is a little sketchy at best.