Zhongshi Hostel Beijing

... to kick in, as we've been walking for an hour or so. We all stopped to buy water and jumped on the bus to see the Temple Of Heaven. This is situated on a little hill and then up about 100 stairs. Very beautiful, but only myself and one other person decided to climb the stairs to see inside. All the building's colours and shapes are representative of the function of the building which is interesting.
Then we ...

... courtyard hotel are highly recommended.

Jihouse courtyard hotel is located 7 Shaluo Hutong, Bei Luoguxiang, Dongcheng District, Beijing.This is a four-star standard hotel .,aslo a unique and special courtyard hotel .Stay in the hotel ,you will find that it is not only the kind of residence , but aslo the rellic in the history of china .

Jihouse ...

... and they were asleep with the lights on (other people were awake). They ended up getting up really early the next morning and being ridiculously loud. This morning, I got up and headed to the National Stadium for the all-around gymnastics final. I ended up finally meeting up with Dave and gave him the extra water polo tickets I got the other day. Sounds like they had a really fun night after team finals, which made me again disappointed I wasn't there ...

... wei abounding. I ended up having some Pigs Feet soup that was actually rather decent and didn't bug my (still) weak stomach much. Returning to the hotel we found an older woman-pimp trying to pawn off some young beauties (oh Americans, you are so predictable). I found the first ad for hard alcohol I had seen in all of China - A bottle of bourbon for (eek) 800rmb (just in direct conversion, that's about 150$, not to mention the ...

... events once they start. We (and most of the foreigners we talk to) are worried that the shock of the air pollution is going to overshadow the games. 6:30pm Back at the hostel and headed to a Chinese Acrobatics show (which proved to be entertaining--tightrope walking, juggling, bicycle tricks, little tiny kids upside down on mini pogo sticks, contortionists, boys leaping through rings 15 ft high etc etc.) 9:30pm We stumble upon a little tea shop, tucked into a side ...

... great wall in the area which is called the upside down arrow .The famous site include the North tower , the small budala palace and the arrow . we get off the great wall and walk 1 hour to the village where we will have nice dinner , chickens and vegetables and soup prepared by rural attendants Evening we drive back to the hotel in downtown Beijing. Service : includes car Jetta , 1 lunch , 1 dinner . accommodation , transportation ; great wall ...

... way, we stopped briefly at the rocky desert to look for some birds including Golden Eagle, White-capped Redstart, Chestnut Thrush and Robin Accentor. After climbing up several mountains (between 3,800 m and 4,300 m), we reached Kanda Shan (坎達山). At waymark 970 km (Kanda Bridge (坎達大橋)), we turned left at the entrance of the bridge for 5 km, and then went into the valley namely "Kanrong Xia enclosed area for forest ...

... lots of shops and outdoor restaurants, and tons of tourists. We did find a bookstore though and picked up a Chinese phrase book - definitely a must-have item around here. We also found a Catholic church and being Sunday, we figured we'd give it a shot....but it was all locked up for some reason... oh well, we tried! We also found a huge strip of food vendors - selling everything you could ever imagine. Most of it was raw meat - and then they had grills hooked up at ...

... 5 yuan instead of walking, and thought the Ming tombs would be more impressive but it wasn't what I expected. The valuables they found inside one tomb were on display and those were pretty interesting, and there was certainly some intriguing history surrounding the tombs. We only visited one of the two tombs open to the public, and it has a beautiful painted ceiling and very large wood posts made of, if memory serves me correctly, camphor wood.

... Square and the Temple of Heaven. Most excitingly, yesterday I walked 12km of the Great Wall! We had to drive for 3 hours out of Beijing to reach the section of the wall but it was totally worth it. The bus dropped us at Jinshanling and within 2km of joining the wall, the other tourists petered out and we had the place pretty much to ourselves. Six of us plus a guide walked all the way to the Simatai section ...