After another long overnight train ride, we arrived in Beijing, the capital of China. While being a little more prepared this time, we stepped out again into the cold, stood freezing, and looked up at the mammoth Western Train Station welcoming us to the city. From here we looked at our map to find out where we needed to go and decided that the subway was only a couple blocks away, so we would head towards that. After twenty minutes of walking with all of our packs, we arrived at the subway and realized that we should pay attention to the scales on the maps a little better for this city since it is enormous.

We eventually found a hostel on a side street just south of Tiananmen Square, set down our things and then ventured out to visit the Forbidden City. Once again, we were stuck by the gargantuan size not only of Tiananmen Square, which is where the "Great Hall of the People" or capital exists, but also the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City was the old palace complex of the Chinese emperors up until the early 1900's when the last emperor was forced to step down. The palace gets its name because over the course of the 500 years that it was occupied by the Ming and Qing Dynasties no one was allowed to enter the palace. The preservation of the palace is immaculate, but one needs an entire day and a lot of coffee to stroll about through the many museums and palace halls.

Putting history aside, one of the best attributes of Beijing is its food...not necessarily its restaurants. The food sold on the streets is amazing both in taste as well as diversity. In fact, keeping up with the size of everything else in Beijing, there is an enormous street that turns into a night food market every night, and has nearly everything imaginable to eat. We feasted on the good things such as pork and chicken kabobs, fried bananas, fried rice and noodles, some fish and shrimp; but there was also an even wider variety of novelty items from grasshoppers and crickets to silk worm larvae, cockroaches, scorpions, and even dog! My love for my own dog made me steer clear from "dog on a stick," but we delved into the others. The silk worms were rather disgusting, but the best show was watching Kelly nearly have a mental breakdown and break out into tears when we made her try a scorpion, which is the thing she is most afraid of in the world! Shaking and scared, she finally mustered up the courage to bring the little creature to her face and eat it, which almost sent her into hysterics, but she faced her fears and made it through like a champion!

The rest of Beijing was nothing short of amazing as well. We ventured out to the Bird's Nest Stadium of the Olympics, which was incredible, but my personal favorite was the Watercube, which was dazzling. Also, one of the best parts about Beijing though is the shopping. Normally, we do not get to do much shopping since we cannot carry much and anything else we have to ship home. However, the knock-off industry in Beijing is rampant, and Ian and I had a blast bargaining and paying $10 for cashmere sweaters or $8 for pairs of Asics shoes. They also have weekend markets that sell all sorts of Chinese antiques and beautiful tea sets, masks, etc.

So, while we did not spend our time visiting Chairman Mao's Mausoleum, we did embrace much of the new and old cultures of Beijing including the Beijing Operas and Kung Fu, which in some cases were an experience that I would only like to have once and in others something I would do everyday. In all, Beijing is a city that to me typifies a lot of what is going on in China now... everything is big, the pace of life is very fast, but there is still a culture that lies beneath that likes to stroll down the hutongs (alley ways) eat the local street food, sip tea, and play games of Chinese chess. It is here that we are very sad to see Kelly leave and return to the United States, but Ian and I will continue on through China over the highest railway in the world to Tibet. Till next time, Cheers.