Beijing Trip Recap

What an amazing trip! We just returned from a full 3-day trip to Beijing. I am totally exhausted but my head is filled with all the amazing experiences. Here are some key highlights:

• Strolled down Tiananmen Square and through the Forbidden City (Palace Museum)
• Took a pedicab ride around the hutongs
• Enjoyed a great Peking duck dinner at Quanjude Roast Duck Restaurant by Houhai and ended the evening with a pedal boat ride around the Houhai lake.
• Hiked the Great Wall at Mutianyu and brought home some souvenirs
• Bought some peaches on the side of the road off some farmers
• Enjoyed a stroll, beautiful water lilies and ice cream popsicles at the Summer Palace
• Watched a great soccer match at the Bird's Nest
• Visited the Lama Temple
• Swam in the Water Cube

Day 0

We were greeted by two of these beautiful murals at the Beijing International Airport
We arrived Thursday night at 9:30pm to Beijing and picked up a cab to our hotel at the Crowne Plaza Sun Palace. As noted in all the reviews, the cab driver had no idea where it was so we had to explain to him. Luckily, I had written down the directions but nonetheless, we still ended up calling the hotel so that he would know the way.

The hotel was beautiful with a great entrance and the service was great. Extra koodos for the staff in attending immediately to changing our room to one with a king bed and then to having the concierge meet us to help us plan our next few days at 11pm. Winnie Su, the concierge manager, was amazing and attended to all of our questions and needs for the trip.

Day 1

We decided to make the tour of the city by ourselves on our first day by taking the subway. We picked up our tickets at the piao.com.cn for our the soccer match at the Bird's Next and headed to Tiananmen Square. We tried to find the underground tunnel tour but most people had no idea what we were asking so we decided to just move on.


We passed by Chairman Mao's Memorial Hall which had a huge line of people outside waiting to go in. We also experienced our first show of how Chinese people love to cut lines. There were specific security guards trying to prevent people from cutting lines with a few still sneaking by.

We then strolled down to Tian An Men passing by the Great Hall of the People and the Monument to the People's Heroes. Everything here seemed to be of a gigantic scale and proportions. Despite the rainy day on a Friday, the plaza was filled with people and tour groups.


The Forbidden City was amazing. Having heard imperial stories of the lives of those who have lived there in the past, it was amazing to be in those same grounds. Part of my mind wondered off into what it would have been like to live back in those days...


After the Forbidden City, we were hit up by quite a few rickshaw drivers looking to pick up people to tour the Hutongs. We picked up one who seemed nice (although a little scrawny...) He was great and drove us all around the Hutongs introducing us to the different building and who had lived there in the past.

On the rickshaw with Mr. Tsi
We paid another extra 30RMB each to visit one of the Siheyuan (courtyard houses). The hostess there took good care that we took pictures at all the best corners of the house. We ended the tour at the Qianhai area where we had dinner at the most famous Peking Duck place - Quanjude Roast Duck Restaurant (全聚德烤鴨店).



The Peking duck experience was amazing. This branch of Quanjude had performances throughout the evening. Despite waiting 1.5 hrs for our table, it was all worthwhile. Ben and I ordered, a cold dish, a duck liver dish, a veggie dish and the whole duck! Not to mention I had to wrap up the evening with something sweet so we finished it off with a giant green bean shaved ice dessert.


After dinner, we went on a pedal boat ride around the Qianhai and Houhai area to exercise some of the duck off. And then strolled around the lake passing by restaurants/bars playing some of the cheesiest (but fun) music ever.


Day 2


We started the morning with the trip to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall. It started pouring in the morning so traffic was especially congested with several road closures due to floods. So we made a pee stop at the Jingtai Lan Cloisonne factory where we also picked up a beautiful cloisonne vase.


By the time we reached the Great Wall, the rain had stopped and we ended with a beautiful hike up on the Wall. We took the covered cable car to the Wall and hiked from there. On the way up, we were in the same cable car that the Seventh Living Buddha rode on and on the way down it was the same cable car the Bill Clinton was in so we felt quite lucky!


At the Great Wall

The view on the Great Wall is simply magnificent. The grandness and stretch of the construction with the backdrop of the mountains is simply jaw-dropping. I could hike and walk on this wall all day. We took the path further up the mountain and went all the way till we hit the end of the 'safe' section up some really steep steps and some great windy sections.


On the way down, you were forced to walk through vendor stands and are harassed a little. We did walk away with a few bargains and definitely also got ripped off a little. ^_^ All part of the experience. Since we didn't have much time, we decided to skip lunch again and opted to pick up some peaches from the side of the road.


Our driver drove us through some beautiful sections of the countryside where fruit, corn and tree fields surrounded us most of the way. It was a beautiful scenery.


We then headed to the Summer Palace. Since we had the soccer game later in the evening, we only had 1.5 hrs for the Summer Palace which was quite a pity. The Palace grounds is essentially an enormous park with a beautiful huge lake and several more ancient Chinese architectures and pagodas. One can easily spend an entire day here riding boats, picnicking, and strolling through these grounds. We made most of our time and enjoyed a little of the hike and stroll by the lake to some beautiful giant water lilies in the water.


Mr Li, our driver, then drove us back to the hotel for a quick change of clothes and then off to dinner at the King of Duck Roast Duck Restaurant (鴨王烤鴨店) by the Olympic center. Our driver went through the trouble of calling and talking the restaurant into giving us a reservation so we only needed to wait 10 minutes for our table. This place was certainly less of a showy place. The duck came out plain and simple with lots of trimming (cucumber, sauce, salt and onion). Given the lesson from the previous night, we opted for half a duck and a veggie dish this time. It was delicious and a great way to wrap up the day.



We then walked to the Olympic park towards the Bird's Nest for the game. Both architectures, the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube, are magnificent in the evening with their beautiful lighting.


The game was quite fun as well. Neither Ben nor I are huge soccer (oops... football) fans but we enjoyed the game and enjoyed the crowd. The stadium was almost at full capacity and there really was not a single bad seat in the entire stadium. Our seats were on the lower level but we walked around the stadium to check out the upper levels and the views were amazing. It was just beautiful!



Day 3

On the last day, we decided to take it easy and slept in. The only things we wanted to get done before our 7:30pm flight was to visit the Lama Temple and swim at the Water Cube.

In order to swim at the Water Cube, we had read that we'd need a 1-inch photo for the deep water certification ID (unless you already had one from China), and then we'd need get the health check, swim 200 meters non-stop, and hold our breath underwater for 30 seconds. So we stopped at a Kodak Express to get our pictures done. It wasn't really Express. They took digital photos and then proceeded to meticulously polish our faces through Photoshop and put in the white background through CorelDraw. The polishing of our faces included removing the shiny areas and evening out our complexion. All of this would normally take 30 minutes; however, due to printer issues, we ended up being there for nearly an hour.

We then headed to Lama temple where I was able to pay my respect to all the Buddhas. The temple used to be a palace for the emperor and it was converted into a nunnery in the 1700's. It is now home to several Buddhas and is known to be good at answering people's prayers.

We arrived at the Water Cube and got in line for the 2pm opening of the swimming pool. The actual Olympic pool is only used for performances so they've opened the warm-up pool for people to swim. We paid 50 RMB each and an additional 20 RMB for the deep water certification, and our 2.5-hour timer started. You usually only get 2 hours but we got an extra 30 minutes to take our deep water certification.

It was my first time in an Olympic size swimming pool so it was quite exciting! Not to mention to swim in the same pool that Michael Phelps swam at! :-) I managed to get in 900 meters and Ben got in 1000 meters. As a side note, our deep water certification only required us to swim 25 meters before they realized that we knew how to swim and pulled us off to the side. We did see one guy who got into the water and immediately freaked out when he couldn't touch the bottom. The deep water test was good for something.

We snuck in some pictures of the pool at the end and wrapped up our trip.

Just after swimming and sneaking a picture in by the practice pool
We headed to the airport to find our flight was delayed from 7:30pm to 8:40pm. In actuality, we didn't board till 8:45 and the plane did not take off till 10pm. Because of the delay, we got a free meal at the airport which almost made up for the fact that we did not get home till 2am. At least the airline provided a shuttle service since the airport express had stopped running.

Despite all the craziness on the trip home, this was a great memorable experience and I definitely can't wait to go back to Beijing again and visit some of the other sites.