Hey Everyone! It’s about 7 AM here in Beijing, and we are checking out soon, having breakfast, then off to Tianenmen Square, Palace Museum, the Forbidden City, and our Peking Duck Dinner. I fell asleep yesterday after coming back to the hotel, so I didn’t really say much about what happened yesterday.
in summary, we scaled the Great Wall for about 1.5 hours. It is definitely much more tiring then it looks because the steps vary in size and there were some that must have been one foot high at a time. I didn’t make it all the way to the top =[, but I did get as far as three or four of the towers on the way up. I stopped when I got to a gift shop… that and I felt like passing out, so opted not to go any further. I don’t know how those top of the wall souvenir vendors do it every day. Afterwards, we went to the Cloisonne Factory, which was awesome. Cloisonne is basically the making of copper items, like those “porcelain” vases that we see all the time in Chinatown or wherever. The copper is sculpted into a shape, and continually fixed and designed before it is handpainted and I guess, fired. We toured the making of it, and it’s definitely a process that requires a lot of focus and patience. After the Cloisonne Factory, we headed over to the Summer Palace, where in ancient times, the Emperors and Empresses would spend their summer, getting away from the intense heat of the inner cities. It was beautiful there, but in terms of tourism – massively crowded and many winding paths. The last stop we made was to the Pearl Factory, where we saw one of the workers open a live pearl and show us the pearls inside. That took about 20 minutes, and the rest was left for shopping. Though they are real pearls, still way too much money to spend at a time. At dinner, we separated as a group. Some went to see a Kung Fu Show for $30 USD, while the rest of us came back to the hotel, and explored the city in groups. We went to the so-called “Times Square of Beijing,” and marveled at the lights and stores. Two of our group ended up on a bunging amusement park ride we stumbled across on the streets and skyrocketed high into the air fearing for their lives, lol.
So, pictures to come of that, but first – pictures from Day One below:
