Day 2: Walking Through History

Today's entry will be a photo essay of our first day (and a half) in China.  We had a terrific time sight-seeing in Beijing today.  It is truly amazing to find ourselves walking around all of these historic Chinese monuments and sites.  I felt like I had just landed in a Travel Channel special.

First, a slight backtrack to Thursday:

Here we are, waving goodbye to Allison, David,and Maggie at the airport. You know you have great friends when they are willing to get up at the crack of dawn and brave the horrible Charlotte traffic to get you to the airport by 8:00 AM.

This is what waited for us when we got to our hotel room!  The flowers were a gift from our guides, Rosa and Maggie.   They left a note, too, welcoming us to China and giving us some helpful hints about our time here ("Don't drink the water.").  

The pocketty bathroom vanity.  I don't think the camera did justice to the sparkliness. 

Here is the view from our hotel window (13 stories up):

After a hearty breakfast in the hotel restaurant (eggs, bacon, croissants, fruit, plus a few Chinese favorites:  a steamed dumpling and a little congee.  The congee had corn added to it and tasted like grits in desperate need of butter and salt.) our travel group hopped on the bus.   Tien'anmen Square was our first stop of the day.  

It is all decked out for the Olympics and Paralympics.

Mark and I made a little game of seeing how many babies we noticed with split pants.  This is a traditional Chinese alternative to using diapers, although we saw a few babies with a diaper peeking out.  Here's one little fella we caught on camera.  There is just a hint of cheek.  It's really funny to see parents carrying their babies on their arm, and a little bubble butt just hanging out.  


Next, we walked through a passageway under the street-- since crossing the busy Beijing streets can be hazardous-- and entered the Forbidden City.  

Our guide, Rosa, said it wasn't very crowded today.
I don't think I have the words to do justice to the Forbidden City, so I'll sum it up in a few adjectives.  Huge.  Ancient.  Grand.  Mysterious.  


After lunch and a visit to the Pearl Market, we headed to the serenity of the Summer Palace.  I needed some serenity after my first experience with shopping, Chinese-style.  When I shop at home, I like to do my browsing and ask for help if I need it.  The ladies at the Pearl Market were not exactly pushy, but they worked real hard to make a sale. 

 I had gotten to model a beautiful strand of champagne pearls for the group during the "tour" of the pearl market.  They were lovely, but represented a significant portion of our souvenir funds for the trip.  Despite the hard sell, we didn't get them.  As we were trying to extricate ourselves from the Pearl Ladies, we realized that our entire group had already finished shopping and left.  Thankfully, our guide came in and rescued us.  We did get a few gifts and some (much more modest) things for Anna Kathryn for future Gotcha Day gifts.  

Next to Kunming Lake at the Summer Palace.  We rode one of these boats across the lake to the main garden area.

We walked along the Long Corridor and then cut down a series of winding paths.  We were all getting a little tired and wondered where we were headed.   We emerged into the "garden within a garden," also known as the Garden of Harmonious Pleasures.  Truly lovely.  Mark and I walked the perimeter of the lake and garden, and were delighted to hear a Chinese woman singing a sweet tune as she and her husband walked on the path.

We headed to dinner by way of the Olympic grounds.  If you look carefully at this snapshot of the Bird's Nest, you can see the Olympic flame burning brightly for the Paralympics.  

We ended our day with another adventurous but tasty family-style Chinese dinner.  One of the more hilarious moments came when one of the 12-year-old boys in our group, not an adventurous eater, took one look at the eggplant dish that was brought out and declared, "I'm skipping that one.  Besides, I don't like eggs!"  When Mark found a foot in his portion of the chopped chicken and vegetables, that pretty much ended the meal for the rest of the table.  We Americans just aren't used to eating the whole chicken, if you know what I mean.  At least it wasn't the beak.  

Good night from China!