Marco Polo Hotel Xidan Beijing

Beijing£¬ Day1 This is Kathy speaking¡­Actually my entry will begin in Hong Kong with our first calamity of the trip. We woke up plenty early to leave for the airport to head to Beijing. We made a vow to be adventureous (for us) and only use public transportation so we decided to take the free airport shuttle bus. One hotel person said it left at 6 am, another said 6:20 and still another said 6:30. So there we were waiting on the street at 6 am watching Hong Kong wake up. Weather was nice. Af...

This is Day 2 in Beijing. It seems like a whirlwind time here already. It is all coming and going so quickly. We have seen and done so much. Our guide is "Scott" who is chinese, and we have a "professional" driver to take us places. His name is Mr Chung. Today we visited the Ming Tombs and the Great Wall of China. It is so nice to have a driver and guide. We woke upt to a sunny and blue sky today. So much different than Day 1 which was smoggy/cloudy. It took us over 1.5 hours to get out to th...

Hello to everybody back home.. FIRST NOTE:...We never got to the noon day gun thing in Hong Kong..we ran out of money so had to go to the bank..the choice being..HSBC or Bank of China..(which would you choose?)....I knew it..I chose HSBC too!..they always advertise that they are the local bank anywhere in the world...and reminding me of little old England..I thought we were onto a sure-fire winner...we weren't...it turns out that HSBC is only local if you actually live in Hong Kong..which mea...

A trip with good friend Irah and her sister Tish and my daughter, Gia.

May 10, 2009 - A day of hitches!..and blessings!

Left Manila at 11am and arrived Beijing at almost 6pm. Waited for about 2 hours for our delayed baggage. The Dragonair flight was quiet impressive serving food
with rice and Haagen Dazs ice cream for dessert! They even beat Cathay Pacific's pathetic tuna sandwich!

Our first glimpse of Beijing was that of its humongous airport. 5X London's Heathrow the...

First stop today is the Hanyangling museum which is at the tomb of one of the Han dynasty emperors. Whilst the tomb itself has not been opened they have dug around it and found another Terracotta army and a load of other items (hundreds of Terracotta animals - pigs, goats, cows and others - for the warriors to "eat"). The thing about this army is their size - they are 18 inches in height. Plus, they have wooden arms which have rotted away. All in all, they look like little dolls. (Call this a...

An early start finds us on the way to the Forbidden City as part of a day long tour. We started at the back of the City. This is where the smaller buildings are. There are 800 buildings in total, all made of wood - hence the current City was built in the 18th century. We gradually walked towards the front of the City with the buildings getting larger and larger. The back buildings were for the Emperor, the front ones were for ceremonies etc. The whole thing is very impressive. The closer we g...

Today was another early start and another guided tour - this time the highlight being the Great Wall or at least one small part of it. First stop was the Great Wall at a place called Badaling about 70km from Beijing. This part of the Wall covers a valley that is on a trade route. The Wall snakes across the hills, down into the valley where there is a gatehouse and up the hills on the other side. It is quite steep, the wall narrows in places so that two people cannot walk side by side and the ...

Our final day in China and one with no tours or pre-planned events. Beijing is different today - it is a bright sunny day and the national holiday week is over so the crowds have gone (that's a weird statement as the place is still teeming with people). First stop was the Olympic park for a look at the Birds Nest stadium and a walk around the area, they've created a load of gardens and parks in the area. Lunch followed our standard process - it's food time and that place looks ok. Well, we're...