Beijing: Part 2

The Great Wall escapade is only part of my tale from Beijing. Day 2 started off with a little train ticket purchasing. Chinese communication was hugely successful, but unfortunately acquiring seats was a dismal failure. Due to the Tomb Sweeping holiday, all seats were already sold, so we ending up with standing room only tickets for our 13 hour return journey to Shanghai (more on that later...)

Anyways, Kevin, Adam, and I kicked off our day with a little exploration of the Summer Palace. On our way out to the Summer Palace we stopped at a little street stand and feasted like kings on chuanr (meat skewers) and rou jia mo (pitas filled with shwarma meat, cucumber, and la jiang). It was AMAZING! Some of the best street food I've had in China... Ok, so we make it to the Summer Palace and the grounds are sweet. I can understand why the emperor wanted to spend his summer months there. There were cool buildings, tree-lined avenues, and beautiful lake views in every direction. Equally omnipresent were saleswomen climbing all over the place with boxes of 1 RMB coconut-flavored popsicles. It was a hot day and we had more than our share of popsicles. Hit the spot. We spent a couple hours wandering around the palace grounds and highlights would include cooling my feet in the lake and reading the plaques at each building (all of which were apparently burned down by the evil Anglo-British forces in the 1860s...)

After checking out the Summer Palace, we made our way over to the Olympic Green (but not before making another stop at the rou jia mo stand and filling up again). The buildings at the Olympic Green were really impressive. I loved the Bird's Nest. It looked like the stadium had an exoskeleton... Very cool. The Water Cube (although equally unusual and iconic) was not nearly as interesting (although I'm told its better viewed at night). We spent a fair amount of time just hanging out and people watching at the Olympic Green. And by people watching I mean using Kevin's sweet long-range lens to take pictures of people really far away. I think we took over 1000 pictures on the weekend and a full 200 were probably taken here...

Daylight was fading at this point, but we decided to hightail it over to Tiananmen Square. It's not everyday we're in Beijing after all... Tiananmen was sweet. I've been before (on my 2006 venture), but I really like the area. I love the workers' statues that line Mao's Mausoleum (which was unfortunately closed by the time we arrived) and there are always crowds of Chinese tourists checking it out and locals flying kites or just enjoying the sun. It was a perfect place to end our whistle-stop tour of Beijing...

Next, I will tell the tale of our standing room only journey home.

- Jon