Jinshuiyuan Hotel Beijing

... one intact until the second part of the trip... Karma. Guess which one is delayed?! Of course not the one I borrowed from Natty (phew!) but the one with all the stuff I planned on using upon arrival. Toiletries, clothes, fresh undies! I have pjs, and... well the hotel is super nice and has toothbrushes. Luckily I also have a great roommate, Heidi, who has offered to lend me some clean socks, and my travel insurance will cover $100 worth of purchased ...

... had been planted. The Olympics had already been declared a success. Beijing was glowing. The day after I arrived was the Opening Ceremonies for the Paralympic Games. It showed on all the same TV stations that the Olympics showed and was just as extravagant. In fact, the flame was never extinguished in between the Olympics and Paralympics. They kept it lit and brought it out again to light the Paralympic torch. As the grand finale of the Paralympic Opening ...

... I stopped there. The park gate is across the street from the back gate of the Forbidden City. Inside I walked through the garden. Then I made my way up a big hill to a pagoda atop. Reaching the summit was great because here was a magnificent never-ending breeze. Inside the pagoda was a large Budha. The best part however was the 360 degree panorama of ...

Hello everyone, There are times when life seems too good to be true. I have at long last found an apartment, no, palace to stay in. For the next two-and-a-half months I will be staying with a very nice plastic surgeon and retired molecular biologist right beside the Summer Palace in north-western Beijing. Their daughter is on an exchange in Colorado but will be back at the end of the month and she is right around my age. I have only seen my wing (there are three) but it ...

... ever, we would see them again . At the same time, though, we were both looking forward to seeing our families and, of course, the actual journey home. We flew into Beijing the day after we finished work and managed to navigate the bus and subway to our hostel, a beautiful traditional Chinese style house complete with courtyard. Even better, it was a few minutes walk from The Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square . We took a wander around the ...

... that the ground is a lot more fluid than you thought solid stone could be. And if you are really having a good day, you'll notice as I did that the wall doesn't have any safety features. Essentially you have the sides of the wall, which come up to about my chest, and then you have a sheer drop, and then cliffs for about another couple of hundred feet more or less straight down. You get the idea. Now while you might think, "oh they still have the wall there, so you ...

... Is it just cars that's causing Beijing's pollution? What about the factories? Did they close some factories surrounding the city as well? If so, it wasn't mentioned in the news. Perhaps today's clearness is just coincidence and tomorrow will be as smoggy as yesterday. I'll let you know. All I can say is it's a beautiful day today and I'm not complaining. I'll keep you posted as to whether this weather persist ...

... so the governement is encouraging people to refrain, at least for the time of the Olympics. Thanks to bird flu and suspicion that spitting could help spread the epidemics, people have refrained from spitting for a while but this was short lived as people are getting back to their old ways. Well, I guess it's like saying to a French man not to eat cheese because the rest of the world thinks it's smelly! If it's "Incredible India!", then it ...

... sbagliata piuttosto che dirti che non lo sanno.. e' estremamente scortese. Non si contraddice. Il problema e' che questo spirito di non contraddizione e' solo espresso a livello macroscopico. In realta' nei loro pensieri la cosa funziona diversamente. E anche i loro sguardi funzionano diversamente da quello che esprimono a parole in queste situazioni. E' solo un parere ma ci ho pensato molto su durante questo stremante viaggio in treno. E' difficile mantenere ...

... lunch today so walked on to the lake again & ate a S'Silk Road - quite trendy & very nice but a bit more expensive.

Took in some more local atmosphere just wandering around in the nearby hutongs, then back to the hotel. Celebrated NYE with dinner at Morel's- didn't party too late as we have a flight tomorrow morning