Beijing!

By the time we got to Beijing, I was exhausted after a long night of no sleep on the train.  We got to our beautiful little hostel, and luckily they had a room ready for us.  So I had to lay down and take a loooong nap before setting out.  And it was soo cold out!  The whole time we were in Beijing we were just freezing cold.  We put on as many layers as we could (I could barely move my arms I was wearing so much) and were still cold the instant we stepped outside.  I will never again travel to somewhere in the middle of winter to go site seeing.  If you're going to a cold place to go skiing, that's a different story.  But trust me, don't go to Beijing in the middle of winter!

We did SO many great things in Beijing and I just don't feel like I can talk about them all here.  Plus I'm sure you don't want to read every last detail of everything we did there.  So here are some of the high lights:  We visited Tianamen Square (largest public square in the world), the Forbidden City, the Lama Temple (one of my favorite things, so beautiful), the Summer Palace (where the emperor would stay in the summer to get away from the Forbidden City), the Olympic area, night food markets, shopping markets, Beihai Park, Temple of Heaven (another one of my favorites), and the Great Wall.  

But really, one of the best parts of Beijing was all the wonderful people we met.  Our hostel was so great and had such a warm atmosphere and it seemed to attract really awesome people.  Going back to the hostel after a long day out in the cold felt like coming home.  Everyone who was staying there would hang out in the enclosed courtyard, so it was easy to meet lots of people.  We met people from all over the world: many people who were also teaching English in Korea (one of whom we've seen a couple times since we've been back), people doing around the world trips, people on their regular vacations, several Brits who had taken the Trans-Siberian train over, a travel photographer, etc...  Everyone was so, so great.  We all would go out to dinner together every night or just hang out and have some drinks at the hostel.  They made the trip what it was!

I think for Beijing I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves mostly.  Everything was really fantastic, but I just don't think I can put it all into words here.  One thing I'll comment on is the Great Wall.  It was really nice and pretty impressive, but somehow I didn't get that really amazed feeling that I thought I would have gotten.  Like when I've been to Machu Picchu, or the Acropolis, all I can think to say is "wow."  But when I got to the Great Wall, all I could think was, "Okay, that's the wall."  I still enjoyed it and am glad that I can say I've been there, but I wasn't as impressed as I would hope to be.  Maybe it was the smoggy air that day (it was clear blue skies all the other days), the hassle we had getting over there, or just the fact that you can't see a ton of it at  the same time, but it just didn't do it for me.  But we still had a great time walking around it and taking lots of photos.  

However I did get the "wow" factor with some of the other places we went in Beijing, like the Temple of Heaven and the Lama Temple.  The Temple of Heaven was so beautiful:  a round temple, how different!  And the ceiling inside the temple was so detailed and really incredible.  And, even more incredible, is the fact that the temple was constructed completely free of nails or screws or anything.  Only wood holding it together.  And the most impressive part of the Lama Temple was the 18 meter high buddha housed in the final building of the temple.  Truly amazing.  

Oh, one more thing I have to tell about in Beijing is the night market!  Our first night in Beijing we went to the night market with a big group of around 10 people from our hostel.  There is a street lined with vendors selling all sorts of crazy foods.  We saw things such as scorpions, snakes, lizards, sea horses, dog, silk worm larvae, crickets, beetles, octopus, sea urchins and every part of the animal you can imagine (including unmentionable parts of sheep, which make you strong according to the salesmen...).  I was not so brave and opted not to try anything.  However one of the guys we were with was the extreme opposite of me and would try anything.  So he got some silk worm larvae, scorpion and dog to share with anyone that would try it.  Jason tried a piece of dog (I can't really forgive him for that one), and many other people tried everything else.  They said the scorpions tasted like fish, but decided that was probably just from the flavor of the oil that they were deep fried in.  

So anyway, check out the pictures here for more.