Disclaimer: I am too lazy, tired, and behind on blog posts to Wikipedia the background info on all of the places we visited and add the info to this post pretending like I remembered all those facts from our tour guides who were less then proficient in English. Apologies. Yes, I did refer to Wikipedia a few times for the post.
Our first day in Beijing we set out to see the Summer Palace and take advantage of the nice weather (only one long sleeve shirt was required). The Summer Palace served as a resort for Empress Dowager Cixi, who took money from the Chinese Navy to build and reconstruct the Palace. This almost crippled the navy. The Palace is a huge area of land on Longevity Hill surrounding a beautiful, man made lake, Kunming Lake. There are a slew of different things on the Palace grounds, museums, islands, temples, a projection TV playing a Mavericks NBA game, and the palace itself. There is a killer view on the top of the hill. Later that night we enjoyed peking duck, a dish Beijing is known for. It was so yummy- the duck comes cut up and you make a small rice paper wrap using the duck, scallions, and plum sauce. We got the usual eggplant side dish and were in heaven.
The next day was our great great day at the Great Wall (see Mary's post for all the juice). Our third day was Mary's official birthday. In the morning we visited the Forbidden City and Tienanmen Square. Both places have a significant place history. The huge picture of Chairman Mao is worth the trip along (joking), but the picture is pretty great. The Forbidden City and Tienanmen Square are located in the center of Beijing and has been used as a podium for peace, justice, conquest, independence and power over the centuries in China. The Square is obviously important as it has been the site of several key events in Chinese history. The Forbidden City complex consists of 980 surviving buildings with 8,707 bays of rooms and covers 720,000 square meters. The palace is rich in Chinese palatial architecture and it is evident in each of its many buildings. There were entire buildings for everything you could think of: getting dressed or storing a royal throne. The City was closed off from the public since the 1400s and was recently opened. After the Forbidden City we went to have lunch at a school for special education. The kids put on a show for us and taught us how to write calligraphy. It was a nice change to the usual restaurant meal and it was great to spend time to the kids at the school.
Our last two days in Beijing we were on a sightseeing frenzy with Holly and Charlie. We went to the Olympic stadium which is incredible. It is such a stunning piece of architecture creating the birds nest effect. We went inside the complex which was impressive to see in person since the Olympics just passed. All the buildings including the swimming pool and the gymnastics arena were top notch, no expense was spared. London has big shoes to fill. After being asked to be in photos with a number of Chinese people (not going to lie, there was a line forming) we headed out to the snack market. The snack market consists of stands selling any disgusting thing you could think of, usually fried. Some of the snacks available to eat were seahorses, scorpions (still moving), or sheep penis. Charlie wanted to try the fried starfish and I decided to take a bite too (you think I would have learned after the monkey). Lets just say I regretted the decision for the next 10 min until I got the gross fish/salty/unidentified taste out of my mouth. Mary and I did find the sour berry stick treat was a favorite of ours.We also checked out the various temples in the city. One had the largest Buddha statue carved out of a single piece of wood. It made the Guiness Book of World Records, which was proudly displayed on multiple plaques outside the temple. It was cool. Next it was time to pack up and head off to South East Asia!
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