Greentree Inn Beijing Guangqumen Hotel (Olympic Games Special)

... so we had to move ours down the trail a little. A few others were up there too and they had to do the same thing. It is probably a good thing because the night was freezing and it would have been very cold on top of a building with the wind.

The rest of the night we had dinner (mystery mash and rice that the locals brought us) and hung out by campfires. We even roasted marshmallows! The Chinese marshmallows are funny and long, and we ...

... to live. October 1st my room here is up, and with the crowds coming for National Day, I really will be homeless. Nothing like a little pressure. =]

Today, I was taken to a beautiful hutong-house-esque place for roughly 3000 kuai- its big and has a beautiful view of the lake. (and I mean BEAUTIFUL!) The agent said it is part of the same building that the teacher who taught the last emperor of China lived in… I’m not too sure about this but the place is neat. I ...

... a little hungry and needed to eat then get back to the hotel. Had another flight to catch. So here we are in Beijing our last evening in China. We got here a little late so had to rush to get to the shops for Mike's last second shopping. We haven't eaten yet but will find something. It is warm out tonight and we have seen a bunch of foreigner's, as if we are not. It is so funny as we have seen so few until tonight. I guess they are all coming for summer holiday.

... less cars, much cleaner, overall aesthically night and day) the one thing that continues to be difficult is traveling without speaking mandarin. most chinese do not speak english so it's fairly difficult to communicate. ie) we've been ordering our meals by pointing at what other people are eating, pointing at pictures or gesturing to random things on the menu. the latter is pretty adventurous. but lucky for us, we've been pretty fortunate. :). anyways ...

... for me was the Great Wall. Took a bus for 3 hours to a remote part of the wall with very few tourists. Then trekked back about 10 or 12 kilometres to another town where the bus picked us up. It's a pretty impressive wall to say the least! My god it was hot and humid there though. Did the trek with John from Sweden, Diana from Iceland and Caroline from Norway. Met up that night for some well deserved drinks in Sanlitun, Beijing's main nightlife ...

... difficult for the masses to understand. It was a time of art for a purpose, and this purpose was pushing forward the proletariat revolution. So no frilly tutu's in this ballet. Women were dressed in soldiers uniforms and danced with rifles and swords in hand. The main plot is a woman, Cheng-hua who is enslaved by her landlord on the tropical Chinese island of Hainan. She manages to escape after almost being beaten to death and is taken in by the local Red Army troupe that is ...

... out to be a mini backpacker mecca. On top of this providence we also on no more than a whim also find the best bar on the street and by my reckoning in Beijing at our first attempt. Outside it looks like a dive, inside it looks like a dive but what it lacks in decor it makes up for in staff, well the one bar man who runs the entire joint ands name sounds like Lee Bowyer (no relation). The concept is simple, every drink costs 10RMB ...

... colors are vibrant and alive. There are so many palaces that we did not make it to all of them even in the whole 7 hours, we probably missed about half or more, because some of the areas were closed because of the renovation work. I took over 300 pictures but my batteries (notice the ies, because I actually had to buy a second one in Mongolia because mine did not last half a day) died so I missed over 100 more or ...

... supervised religious organizations.Buddism and Taoism have dominated for 2 millenia. 4. China is the 4th largest country - 9.6 million km2. Our first night in Beijing we went to eat the famous Peking Duck! In Chinese and Japanese the city of Beijing is called "Peking" (pronounced Pecking). Justin had been to Beijing before with his family and knew of a famous restaurant in the city for duck-so we set out to find it. Outside the restaurant were pictures of famous ...

... at the numbers of people here, because with 1.38 billion people, China holds 20% of the world's population. Funny, a good percentage of them seem to be in Beijing at the Forbidden City! To see the museum's web site, go to http://www.dpm.org.cn/English/default.a sp Later in the day, we cannot see the sun for the pollution. The next day is much better, the skies are clear and blue in the morning and there is a soft breeze which takes the pollution away ...