Alrighty! Emma and I have returned from our trip to Beijing (Or Peking... Or Peiching... Or Zhongdu... Or Peiping... Or a hundred other names depending on who was in power, or who was conquering, or who was recording the name) on Thursday. We had a great time, and definately saw a ton of stuff there!
In order to fully explain everything, and in order to not go crazy trying to write everything down in one entry, I'm gonna split up my writing about Beijing...
So we left Osaka at about 10:25 am on Sunday... That meant that we had be at the airport at 8:25 (2 hrs. early for an international flight) which meant we had to be in Sannomiya for the Airport Limousine (which is, in actuality, a very crowded bus) at 7:05, which means we had to leave the Akashi train station at 6:30, which means we had to leave our house at 6 or so, which means we had to wake up at 5:30...
In other words, we had to get up early... And we were tired...
At the airport we exchanged our Yen for RMB (Or Chinese Yen... Or Yuan... Or Gen... Or a hundred other names depending on who you talk to...) and headed to the plane...
We flew on JAL (Japan Air Lines) and it was a really nice flight... Only about 3 hours... We got the usual snack and drink plus a full meal! That was pretty cool... Also cool was the video monitors that were embedded in every seat... They had on-demand movies, video, games, and audio for free! It definitely made the flight go by faster... And more comfortable... One million times better than the usual NWA flight in The States...
We arrived in Beijing and met our tour guide, ShuTran (Or Shoe Tran... Or ShooTran... Or Sc hyoo Tran... Or TsuTuran... Not sure...) who tried very hard throughout the tour to talk to us in English, but most of the time just asked us, "Do you have to use Toilet?"...
We made our way to the hotel and checked-in, then walked to Wangfujing, which had less to do with wangs than expected, and more to do with name brand shopping... We went to the food court at the mall and sampled a lot of different Chinese entrees... I had some chopped chicken pita-esque sandwiches and some spicy sweet and sour peanut chicken.... Emma had won-ton ramen and some gyozas... But mostly we had some beers, which were super cheap and delicious! Tsingtao is the beer of choice in China, a Chinese equivalent to Budwesier.
After our dinner, we wandered around some more, went to the Night Market (of food) and then headed back to the hotel for some much needed rest...
Day Two will include The Forbidden City and The Great Wall... But that will have to wait as I am sick of typing!
Check out the pictures here... But DON'T look ahead... I'm watching you!
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