Day 2 Beijing

Hello everyone! This is the start of our on-line diary. To catch up - we flew into Tokyo watched a few hours of Sumo Wrestling on TV while waiting for our connecting flight to Beijing. Met an American who we ended up seeing last night at a Kung Fu show (and Beijing is no small town!). Got into Beijing and amazing found our hotel as after leaving the airport, he pulled over on the side of the freeway to ask us for directions all in Chinese. Scary! Fortunately we had the phone number and he had a cell phone, so after me yelling at him that he did not need to dial the 011-country-city code, but just whatever number of digits they have - he figured it out and we got there.

The next day we walked to Tinnamen Square and observed the people, buildings, culture and tried to learn how to order food. There we saw the count down to the Olympics - about 620 some days! Instead of walking the same way back to the hotel we took what we thought was a parallel street and ended up walking completely off our map - this time without the hotel phone number. Fortunately we did know that our hotel is near a train station so we stopped a tour group to ask their guide how to get back. The 3 hour walk ended in about 5-6.

That evening we met our group which consists of Australians, two Germans, 1 Dutchman, 1 Canadian, one Brit, and us. Our guide, Brett, is American, but currently lives in Tibet. He's fantastic and extremely knowledgeable of the region. Given that the train just went into to Tibet, we all feel that our trip is very timely to see things before too much change happens. After going over logistics, we all went out to eat which was great as Brett ordered. He also said that we should not be afraid to walk into kitchens ourselves and just point at the food. Brett ordered a bunch of great dishes, plus 2 ducks that we never would have ordered but were great (minus the duck).

Yesterday, we woke up early and all bused out to the Great Wall. We went a less touristy section, but can't recall the name now. We walked the countless steps up to the top and then went from tower 1 to tower 20. It was amazing and the day very clear so we got great views and pics. Rather than walk down, we all opted for the metal 1/2 pipe tobaggon which was fun and not that scary as we had some older more nervous tourists riding the brake. It looked like a giant water slide. Later that evening, Jeff and I went out to nice Sichuan spicy-food restaurant. The rest of the group ended up at the same one and felt bad that they were disturbing our romantic evening when in actuality we were starving so went out for dinner at 4. It was spicy - I didn't know you could marinate so many things in chilli. Afterwards we went to a Kung Fu show which was phenonmenol. Not only were the moves amazing, but it told a story of a young Buddhist growing up and learning the art so they had children doing the moves as well. Amazing!

Today we toured the Forbidden City. Then all ate lunch together - again great having a group meal picked out by a local. Afterward we went on a rickshaw tour of the Hutongs (old family parts of the city [families all live together around a courtyard]). We actually got to visit inside a Hutong and meet the head of the household who is a retired engineer that learned rice paper cutting from his mother which he currently does in his free time. He had some amazing cutouts that we have photos off.

Anyways - off to catch the train to Xian. Hope to update the journal with pictures soon. Love Liz and Jeff