Jinjiang Inn (Beijing Tiantan Park)

... scale is impressive. We take the easy way down, a 1500 meter Toboggan ride down to the bottom of the hill to meet our guide for lunch. Lunch is spent cracking an ice cold beer and looking at what we just walked over.

Other than that we went to the Drum tower, where they have a session every half an hour. saw china town in china, glad we did not stay south of Tananmen square, olympic site the birdsnest is just as good in the flesh and ...

... 8221; 、“月” 、“ 水 ”、“ 牛”and so on take the shape of each term. These Pictographic characters changed the original character of the physical into a subsequent Founder fonts after gradual evolution, and some reduction in the number of strokes and some strokes added by the rules have become irregular fonts.
Beijing, Beijing, China sinocenter

... br>2. Roses (peach roses) on the islands on the streets, colorful blooming flowers on the side of the streets together with the weeping willow trees! Mini garden, parks everywhere...
3. The city is built around the Forbidden City---so main thoroughfares are named "1st ring", "2nd ring",etc.
4. Most of their lamposts are solar-powered!
5. A very modern, very huge international airport!

Unimpressed by:
1. Difficulty in communicating. (Oh we had a funny experience when ...

... pictures and catch our breath. My fear of heights didn't kick in at all, just the fear of passing out from no oxygen. It was a beautiful view from the top, and I'm not sure I've ever been anywhere that was that beautiful and impressive. Seeing that it took a great amount of physical effort to simply climb the Great Wall, it completely blows my mind to think it was constructed by hand with no modern conveniences. After slowly making it back down with my rubber legs ...

... at the entrance of a night food market--one of those few markets allowed to operate during the Olympic Games. It is a chain of small food vendors lining up on one side the Dong Hua Men street, 30 to 40 of them. Many of them sell the same types of food items. It's such a sight and a fun experience walking past each ...

... foreign tourists. Olympic Hotels Slash Rates as Costs, Visa Rules Deter Visitors By Wing-Gar Cheng July 23 (Bloomberg) -- Beijing hotels are slashing rates by as much as 50 percent for next month's Olympics in a last-ditch bid to lure tourists put off by soaring travel costs and difficulties obtaining visas. Hotels that ramped up their prices, anticipating an Olympic windfall, are backtracking as bookings lag behind expectations. The capital's four ...

... in 1421 during the Ming and Quing Dynasties, it is where the Emperor would pray for a good harvest. No ordinary people were allowed inside. There are no nails in the construction and it is built of wood. This was the first of many building and temples we would see and I found it quite impressive. Animals/Dragon on the roof protect from evil spirits. The more animals, the more important the building is. The Hall of Supreme Harmony is the only building with 11 animals ...

... the great wall. You would think there would be quite a few in around the Forbidden city but we found none. Rather than walking back to the one near our previous hostel, we opted to go to Francis's hotel and see what they had to offer. In the end we booked a tour that took us to the great wall and the Ming toombs. Unfortunately it ment we had to be at the hotel by seven in the morning!!! Early night then.

... choreographed light show , timed perfectly with the music. The bank of China being the queen of the bunch & drawfing the rest. No idea how much something like that must have cost to design, set up & complete for 30 days straight but I guess its a potential insight of how glad they were to become their own region. Pretty impressive. For anyone reading this who, like me, wasn't aware of the whole SAR thing..... Hong Kong went back to China but it seemed to have gone back on ...

Thanks to Ting's parents we had 2 return tickets on the train to Beijing. It is a 12 Hour overnight train ride, and we had the 2 bottom beds in a 4 berth cabin. I have never been on a sleeper before and it was reminiscent of those movies you see with the corridor down one side of the train. We shared a cabin with a businessman traveling from Shanghai to Beijing on business, and a ...