January 23, 2011 - Part 1
It was our first morning in the new hotel at Beijing. We started off a great day with the best breakfast we've had yet. There were still steamed vegetables, grilled meat, and odd buns... but we had the friendly new additions of fried eggs, toast, coffee, bacon, sausage... even cereal!!! With warm milk... but you gotta work with what you get in China.
We took off in our tour bus with Raymond our tour guide to a Jade Factory North of Beijing. The enthusiastic guide in the jade factory invited us to watch some of the craft workers as they etched some of the jade stones into beautiful figurines. Some of the existing pieces were worth up to $100,000!! The tour was beautiful and ended with some good deals on beautiful jade jewelry.
After some happy purchases, we headed for the Great Wall with much anticipation. We could start to see the wall lining the tops of the mountains as we approached. I have to tell you, this is one tourist attraction that lived up to... even exceded my expectations. And my expectations were sky high. Sky High is where we seemed to be headed as we climbed up hundreds of stairs, some that were 15 inches tall! The air was freezing, but the sights were gorgeous. My group took tons of pictures and enjoyed racing up sets of stairs, dancing at the top, and just spending time being amazed at the beautiful landscape all around us.
After a great afternoon climbing and smiling, we trudged back the bus and rode away from one of the greatest ancient wonders of the world. I was in a daze of disbelief for the whole bus ride. I couldn't believe we had just been on something that is so huge it can be seen from the moon!
We visited the Ming tombs (see Sara Swetz entry)
We stopped by a row of statues and walked for 30 minutes. We got our only group jumping picture here. It was a peaceful walk in the setting sun. I was just grateful to see the sun after the smoggy Chengdu.
Because of Beijing's wild traffic, we were running a bit late for the Kungfu show. We considered missing dinner, but grumbling tummies vetoed that idea right away. It was decided to go with the classic fast and easy food: McDonalds.
This wasn't McDonalds from home though. This was China McDonalds. Some unique treats included: Taro Root pie, Pineapple pies, Black Currant and oreo McFlurry. There were some gold standards though. Mcnuggets and Bigmacs. We scarfed down our delicious semi-American food on our way. With smiling tummies (and later some not so happy tummies) we headed to the show.
See Sara Swetz for the Show
Mary Wuest
Mary Wuest
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