In Beijing

Well my last post did not make it onto the web site somehow, something about the settings on the computer, oh well. We made it to Beijing and have busy (or tired) enough that we are just know catching up and or napping.



We were up almost 24 hours by the time we got to the Holiday Inn Downtown Beijing on Thursday evening. We met our guide the next morning in the lobby for our day of Touring around Beijing. We started at Tiananmen Square and saw the Famous picture of Mao and had our picture taken in front of him. There are other importnat buildings in the square, but would have to look them up in our guide book that is at home to tell you what they were. We wlaked to the Forbidden City that is just behind Tiananmen Square. It is were the Emporers held daily business, had ceremonies, weddings, banquets, ................ Again foggy on the history because of lack of sleep. Those two tours took about 3-4 hours. We had lunch at a local restaurant with many different dishes served on a lzy susan for 8-10 people at a table. We than got back on our bus and went to a Silk factory, where they showed us how silk blankets and blanket covers were made. We had an oppurtunity to buy the blankets, and or different items they had upstairs in their store. We then were taken to tour the "Hutong" which are a very old preserved part of Beijing's history where people or families live a courtyard type setting and share bathroom facilities. We were told about the history of the Hutong and visited a family where they lived. It was very interesting part of the day. Oh, and we toured this area on rickshaws.



Oh, and the weather in Beijing...............Hot and Humid!!!!!!! Our guide told us it had been raining off and on for several days and was very hot and sticky. We had also heard about how bad the air and pollution was and that was also correct. Between the weather and smog it was very heavy air to breathe.



Back to our 12 hour day on Friday.............. We next went to an Acrobatic Show. Very very entertaining. It reminded me alot of the new show "Circus of the Stars" or something like that. Lastly we went to a Peking Duck Dinner. We had had a similar dinner in Boise the Chinese New Year before this last one, so we kind of knew what to expect. We had roast duck (main attraction) and others dishes on a 4-5 lazy susan. That was pretty much our day on Friday.