The holiday has begun, after a comfortable night on the overnight express train we arrived into an organised not overcrowded city. Our hotel was only 2 km from the train station so it didn’t take too long to get there and find something to eat before we started to explore the city. We quickly established that living in the hutong’s would be a fun thing to do for the second half of the week so after a considerable walk we found a suitable place. To be fair at that point we should have realised that the map we were using wasn’t exactly to scale but after a expensive lunch (us northerners don’t usually pay that much) we felt so energised we ignored the one lesson the last walk should have taught us and headed out for what we now refer to as the ‘Wally World Walk’ the aim was to walk to the Birds nest and Cube then taxi it back to our hotel. Well over 2 hours later (remember we had already had a mammoth walk and an early morning) we found the ‘Olympic Stadium’ it didn’t really remind us of the Olympic’s but were past the point of caring, so we took a few snaps and started our attempts to find a taxi. Things are a bit different than up north, they don’t share taxi’s for starters, we had become quite accustom to shoving a piece paper with our destination written in Chinese for the poor taxi driver and fellow passengers to sort out. Peak hour in Beijing – no chance, so seeing a now familiar RT Mart in the distance we headed there to rest and wait for the worst of the rush to end. When we got to the first set of traffic lights and looked left, no right, left, no right again there was a very recognisable birds nest and cube in the distance in our exhausted state it seem too great a distance to conquer so with no Olympic spirit we gave up.
The next morning we only had a short walk to the Forbidden City which is absolutely huge, then on to Tiananmen Square. More walking to the Beijing Opera which I thought wasn’t as entertaining as the Sichuan Opera. On Thursday we rested, spent the morning organising packages to Australia and Guangzhou. We have sent a small box to Australia for $26 just to get rid of some souvenirs and clothing, they are on a slow boat to Australia which should take about 2-3 months. The large heavy parcel to Guangzhou was only $12 so am rather pleased with myself that I don’t have to lug the extra kilos around China with me. We then had a rather flash lunch of Peking Duck and then I showed off my subway navigation skills I had acquired when I was living in London and for 2 Yuan (30c) we have been zipping around under Beijing ever since. Our first stop was Silk Street as Nick had been coveting the Rolex watches, so after he watched me have this lovely exchange with the shop assistance who wanted 2300 RMB for 2 cashmere sweaters and I got them for 850 ($130) he decided to let me help with the bargaining for his watch. So off we went to the appropriate floor – the place is 6 stories high, he found a really nice looking Rolex, the guy wanted 420 ($63) so by this time I had seen one I quite liked and chipped in to the bargaining the shop assistant and I had just established 300 ($45) for both watches and then out of the blue Nick suggests 350, it was hard not to burst out laughing after I had got over the shock. Luckily this didn’t flare up another round of bargaining and so we got the watches for 300. Since that purchase Nick has become obsessed with time, initially I though he just liked looking at his watch but he kept on asking me the exact time, you guessed it, the Rolex is not really keeping a time that is useful.
After the shopping were in the right area so we took ourselves to a highly entertaining Kung Fu show, though I experienced a few cringe worthy moments when they started breaking wood on their bodies and lying on nails it was fun.
For Friday we had booked a tour to walk the ‘Mutianya’ section of the Great Wall, it was through our hotel as the tour agent had very good English and a helpful personality so the booking came with a request to address my parcel that was going to Guangzhou, she was really thorough and rang the hotel I had booked to discuss it with them and wrote the address in Chinese. So after enduring a Jade factory visit (I don’t even wear the Jade bracelet I already own let along buy another one) the lunch was good, the Sacred Way (part of the Ming tombs) was completely underwhelming and then we were told we only had 2 hours on the wall! We were racing up those steps as soon as our tickets had been purchased, the rest of our group took the chairlift up. The wall was magnificent, the views fabulous just not enough time. Nick walked back down but I couldn’t resist the toboggan chute and I thought I was over that speed adrenalin stage of my life but I was really looking forward leaning into those corners, unfortunately I couldn’t maintain my speed for very long as I quickly caught up to other slower toboggan’s so never got a long clean run besides the top section.
We have now moved into the hutong’s and are enjoying the charm of the small shops and alley’s as well as the local lake which is packed with bars and restaurants. We did climb up to the Bell and Drum tower’s, in fact we climbed the Drum tower twice so we could watch the Drum show. Hopefully we won’t leave Beijing before we can revisit the Wall, Birds nest and might even return the faulty watch.
