Today was great. We:
- Saw Tienanmen Square : It was nice to see, but (without taking anything away from it), there wasn't much to see there -- it has tremendous political importance, but is visually not that stimulating. Basically, its a big, well, square. Lots of people. Saw the outside of the Chairman Mao Mausoleum -- it's a big building, and his body is on display in there. You can spend several hours standing in line waiting to get in to see him, then you get to see him for about 1 minute. Needless to say, we did not do this (it would have prevented us from doing some of the other things we had planned for the day).
- Saw The Forbidden City (see picture above) : This was right across the street from Tienanmen Square. It was pretty neat, and very big. The buildings looked a lot like the ones we saw at the Summer Palace (no real surprise there). It took a long time to get through the city (all walking outside or through arches, etc). There was a very nice Royal Garden (or something like that) at the end. Neat trees and rocks and such.
- Went to lunch at a nice Chinese restaurant and had a variety of Chinese food, including Peking Duck. All good stuff.
- Stopped by for a quick look at the Birds Nest stadium that was built for and used in the 2008 Olympics. We couldn't get too close (didn't have much time to spend there), but were able to take some nice pics of it from a distance, plus were able to drive by the Water Cube and a couple other Olympic buildings.
- Climbed the Great Wall of China! This was the highlight of the day for me. We climbed pretty high up (up to the third tower), and the only reason we stopped was because we had to head back down to meet at the bus. I really enjoyed climbing the wall as well as taking in the scenery. We took lots and lots of pictures and movies. When we get back home, I'll have to create a DVD or two (or five) of pictures and movies that we took...
Speaking of pictures, I've started putting some pictures up on Flickr, and they can be accessed via the following website:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7303330@N03/collections/72157623972227053/
It takes a lot of time to go through all the pictures we have, and I don't want to spend too much time on the computer every day, so I might not get the majority of the pics up until we get back home (sorry!).
And, I have to say this again... Everywhere we go, people continue to want to take Danny's picture. But at least he's starting to get used to it! LOL!! It's amazing. Our tour guide was saying she thinks it's because he's a cute kid (no arguments from me!) with a big smile, and he has curly hair, which is something that Asians aren't used to seeing. It wouldn't surprise me if his picture shows up on a billboard somewhere in China...
Today Bonny, Danny and I wore our "Soma FM" t-shirts (Soma FM is an Internet radio station based out of California, and if you send them a donation, they will send you a T-shirt; I've been donating to them for a few years now, so we've been collecting Soma FM T-Shirts, and today we all wore ours). Today people were wanting to take pictures of all three of us! It was really bizarre (in a good and funny way). And a few times as we passed some young (20-something) Chinese people, they pointed to our T-shirts and started chattering excited -- I can only guess that they recognized the Soma FM logo and were (pleasantly) surprised to see it on our T-shirts.
I also want to say that the Chinese people have been extremely nice to us, and they try to help us when we ask for assistance -- we usually can muddle through it using body language, etc. The trip has been very enjoyable and relaxing -- way more than I was expecting. I'll admit I was more than a bit nervous about being in a strange land and not being able to speak the native tongue, but the kindness of the people has really put me at ease. I would love to come back and spend more time visiting China -- there's so much to see that you could come back many times over many years and still only scratch the surface of the culture and history of China.
No comments:
Post a Comment