Beijing - 'Let the walking commence'

10 things we learned in Beijing

1. Nobody, and I mean nobody, speaks English!
2. Harriet's feet are so big compared to the Chinese, we had to wait 10 minutes in a market for them to find a shoe her size.
3. There are no such things as queues.
4. Squatting over a hole isn't that bad when you've been waiting to go to the toilet for over an hour.
5. The Great Wall of China has to be the greatest thing ever built by man.
6. Beijing is huge....we walked 44 miles over 4 days and that was with using the underground system for every trip. Cue sore feet and blisters.
7. Harriet is slightly more gullible than Laura and had to be saved several times from the few people who did speak English when they were trying to sell her oil paintings. We also had to walk on the opposite side of the road to avoid meeting a women Harriet had arranged to see about a painting.
8. Angriest reaction of the trip so far was when Laura shouted 'rude' to a random man who sat at our table and drank Harriet's coke out of her cup!
9. Drivers in Beijing use their horns every 1.2 seconds, only slightly higher than Laura when she delivers a dominos pizza.
10. We are celebs in China, after having to pose for photos with at least 10 individuals and families.....coming to a Chinese mantelpiece nowhere near you!

Shortened version
Day 1 - arrived in Beijing
Day 2 - summer palace and Olympic stadiums
Day 3 - Great Wall of China
Day 4 - forbidden city, temple of heaven, pearl market, lama temple and Peking duck.
Day 5 - Tiananmen Square and more shopping

Beijing.....we came, we saw and we tried to conquer despite the severe language barrier!!!

Day 1
We arrived in Beijing after 24 hours in transit, and were relieved to be able to take our shoes off and lie down in a horizontal position. Wanting to try and beat the jet lag, we decided to explore the local area and get our bearings. We instantly made a wrong turn and were lucky enough to bump into an English speaker who pointed us in the right direction of the Dongcheng night market. The culinary delights before our eyes were enough to turn even the hungriest of stomachs, including spiders and scorpions roasted on a stick! We tried a couple of the more tame items before collapsing in our bed for some well deserved sleep.

Day 2
After waking up in this city for the first time we put on our sun cream, stocked up on drinks and headed to the Summer Palace. It wasn't what we were expecting (similar to Buckingham palace) but it was magnificent. Walkways between trees leading you to different parts of the palace, including the marble boat and many other things. Here was the start of our celebrity status with people asking for a picture with us at many of the attractions.
In the afternoon we decided to head along to the Olympic park to see how it compared to the others we have seen. I must admit it was slightly disappointing as it was mostly shut due to an athletics event in a few days time but seeing the birds nest and water cube first hand is something we couldn't pass up.
After a quick shower and change in the hotel we headed out for some more traditional fare than that we had seen the previous night. The restaurant had a menu with pictures and interesting translations, and we managed to get a meal with only one dish we couldn't stomach. We headed to bed early, excited for tomorrow and a trip to the Great Wall of China.

Day 3
The day we had been talking about for 9 months was finally upon us, and all we had to do was brave the Chinese public transport. Where the subway system had English translations for stops, the bus system did not. After managing to catch the correct bus we relied on Harriet's expert symbol matching to make sure we didn't miss our stop. One taxi ride later, with a driver we nicknamed Ken, and we were at the visitor centre for Mutainyu.
A quick pit stop later we were on our way up to the wall courtesy of a cable car.we couldn't have anticipated the vastness of the wall or the spectacular settings in which it was built. We could see for miles from all angles. After quickly surveying the area we decided on heading towards the north and visited the furthest point of the Mutainyu section of the Great Wall. It was tiring work, even having to climb with hands at points, but reaching the end point was worth every bead of sweat. It was slightly embarrassing as we mopped our brows and caught our breaths to see old Chinese men making the trip with ease.
After returning to our starting point we had what must be the most expensive beer ever drank in China, but the view of the wall made it the best beer we have ever tasted.
Then came the toboggan ride back down....1 mile of exhilarating downhill slopes, with twists and turns through the trees.
This is definitely one day in our lives we will never forget!!
After making it back to Beijing, exhausted but still on a high from the day we went out for dinner. This meal was definitely not the most successful we had in Beijing, as there was no English translation or even pictures to guess at. Our waitress only knew one word in English and that was beef....so to stop the suspense you will be feeling right now, I will let you know that we had beef. And not good beef, pretty bad beef by all standards. We quickly paid our bill and made our escape to McDonald's where we got ourselves an ice cream to fill a small hole.

Day 4
Unsure of how we're going to improve on yesterday's antics, we decided to head out to see the forbidden city, the temple of heaven and lama temple.
We also managed to slip in a quick visit to the pearl market which saw Harriet in her element, bartering with stall holders left and right. We may have left with some unwanted bargains but it was a great experience.
All of these were fantastic in their own right, but lama temple was the biggest surprise of our trip.
Unsure of what to expect we headed here late in the afternoon to make sure we got to see it before leaving the next day. And we are eternally grateful we didn't miss it. This has to be the most palpably spiritual place we have ever been, from the incense handed out at the door to burn in honour of the gods, to the 4 storey tall statues of Buddhas and the monks going about their daily lives. People were praying all around to the many statues and were visibly delighted to be at the one of the homelands of Buddhism.
All in all this was a magical place to visit.
Trying to improve on our food finds of the trip we decided to use Laura's research and go to a Peking duck restaurant she had found in the Dongcheng area. We had no idea of how to get there exactly but followed our instincts and the trip advisor map to find that 1 mile later we had walked 0.5 mile the wrong way. We quickly turned back on ourselves and eventually found the restaurant we were looking for.
Looking slightly dishevelled and with rumbling tums we hoped that there would be a table free, and thankfully there was. The Peking duck was the most incredible we have ever tasted and we savoured every bite. This made up for the meals of the rest of the trip and had we been in Beijing longer we would have definitely returned.

Day 5
This was our last day in Beijing and we only had one more thing on our list to do....Tiananmen Square. We had a similar feeling stepping into the square as we did onto the Great Wall, a strange tingling down our back with goosebumps appearing in the 30 degree heat. It was breathtaking, especially when picturing the significance of events that happened here in the past. We think that we may have missed chairman Mao giving a speech, but given our Leo of understanding of the Chinese language we felt okay about this.
Having the rest of the afternoon free we decided to embark upon another shopping adventure, this time visiting Nan Luoguxiang - a popular, traditional Chinese shopping street. We managed to grab a few bargains, this time wanted ones, to end what had been an amazing few days in this great city.
Time to catch the train to Xi-an!!!

Speak again soon,
Harriet and Laura xxx