Beijing Exploration

Thanks to Ankesh we may have solved some of our posting issues from China.  We'll see if this works... or not. 

On the adventure side, we have had a few to report back...

Walking around the city, it is difficult to move about without constantly being interrupted by a rickshaw driver asking to give you a ride.  Most of the time they only know a few words in english, and continue to bother you.  If you acknowledge those that do talk to you (for example saying "no thank you") they will park their rickshaw in front of you to block the path.  Heather is learning to stop answering.

Street hawkers are really pushy here.  Especially when you're leaving the Forbidden City.  Those in the Olympic City are less pushy but more vocal.  They sell the same crawling solider man toy Dan has seen in Shanghai, but here they've placed a Chinese flag in it's hand.

Beijing as a city is completely covered in cement.  Both of us have been amazed at the size of many of the sights, but also just how much cement there is.  Your feet are certainly tired by the end of the day.  Heather has been so tired she's fallen fast asleep quickly at night. 

Yesterday we made it to the Summer Palace, in the northwestern section of Beijing.  After a beautiful hike up the hill to see the views, Heather embraced her inner-Chinese and ignored all the signs stating no climbing on the rocks.  We walked partially around the lake, but the amount of tour groups moving through the area made it difficult to move at any pace. 

We then took the subway to the Olympic Park to check out the grounds of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.  To say that the grounds are massive is an understatement.  The Birds Nest and Water Cube are both equally impressive structures, dominating much of the park greens.  Much of the greens were flat and open, for easy walking, covered in cement.  What was more interesting was to note that it appeared much of the Olympic City was still under construction, with active welding, and construction taking place. 

The subway back was difficult.  The easy route, listed on our map, was shown by the subway ticket sales to not exist.  We still bought the tickets, as the price is the same no matter where you go.  When we got down to board the subway, the map tells us the stations are not yet complete, including about 80% of the Line 8, which is the Olympic City line in/out of the old city center.  We eventually made it home with a long circular route around the city underground.