Would you believe I ate a bee?
Trip Start
Jun 01, 2005
1
10
12
Trip End
Jul 22, 2005
Xi An, China
Friday, July 15, 2005
After two days in Beijing, I was really just hopping to get out of the city. Fortunately, we definitely exprerienced a change of pace on day #3 so that things definitely ended on an upswing. With our tour group, we saw some of the core city sites, such as Tienanmen Square, the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace and of course the Great Wall. The first two I mentioned were interesting, but so packed with tourists that it was really hard to take it all in. The summer palace was definitely pretty packed, too, but I couldn't help but be impressed with the courtyard after courtyard of rooms and chambers all surrounding a beautiful manmade lake! While you definitely expect the Great Wall to take the cake, I'd have to say that it really does. You just don't realize how amazing it is until you have climbed to the top of a stretch of the wall and just see how it climbs mountains and descends into valleys. Fortunately, we avoided having too many tourists in our way by taking the "hard" climb, much to Jenn's dismay.
The highlight of my Beijing experience really was yesterday. Jenn and I met up with a friend from New York (Rachel) and spent the day with her. Rachel had spent the last three months living in Beijing and studying Chinese. She was an awesome tourguide and took us to a Silk Market, lunch, an awesome park, out for Peking Duck, a craft street, and then to an awesome area where several lakes are completely surrounded by bars and restaurants. We also got to peek into several Hutongs, which are little alleys that families live off of which share common bathrooms and often common courtyards. Definitely really interesting to see.
On leaving Beijing, I really have to say I walk away with mixed feelings. Some of the stuff we saw was really cool, but I didn't really feel that it was a city with a lot of charm other than the people. The city is basically one giant pool of smog. They'll try to tell you that things have gotten better because you can go outside without a face-mask now, but that didn't really strike me as a ringing endorsement. There is no real center to the city that I could ascertain and rather there are just a lot of criss-crossing boulevards that aren't very pretty or easy to cross. I think it's definitely a very personal thing. Rachel was totally in love with the city, and Jenn liked it a lot as well. I felt that I would definitely recommend that someone check it out, but I wouldn't put it on my top ten list of cities to return to. I'm definitely happy to have moved on and I am more optimistic about the rest of the places we're going.
An Interesting Observation: Our tour includes almost every meal. In many cases, we have access to huge buffets. The interesting part is that no matter what you only get one free drink. On one occasion, I could eat as much lobster as I wanted, but couldn't have more than one water. Can someone explain that to me?
