March 10, 2015

After taking the bullet train from Shanghai on Sunday, we are now in Beijing! Right out of the gate, the best part about Beijing is that there is much more English than there was in Shanghai. We made it through the train station and got a cab with no problem at all and we were at the hotel in only about 20 minutes. I have to say, I am so impressed with the cleanliness of the cities. There is hardly a piece of trash anywhere. The streets are clean, the subways are completely free of trash and everything is in good working order. I’m sure it has to do with everything being government run, but there are plenty of police and other public officials around to keep things orderly. The lines for the trains/subways are organized, people don’t push/shove to get in front and Hayden has almost always been offered a seat on the subway (it’s a good spot for a quick nap).

We got a little spoiled in Shanghai since they upgraded us to a suite, so the regular room here in Beijing seemed a little cramped. J Despite the smaller room, Hayden thinks this place is awesome because in order to get to the bathtub, you need to walk through the shower…seems pretty weird to us, but it cracks him up to be sitting in the tub and the shower at the same time. We fell asleep by about 6:30 pm the first night (again!), so we were up at the crack of dawn. We decided to take advantage of the early start and get moving first thing in the morning.

We had planned to visit the Summer Palace, Temple of Heaven and the Forbidden City. We hit our first roadblock when we discovered that the Forbidden City is closed on Mondays…oops. It actually turned out to be fine because the Summer Palace was HUGE, beautiful, and we spent more than 4 hours there! It was an extremely large complex of buildings, gardens, and TONS of stairs. The buildings were beautiful and the pictures don’t do them justice.

Hayden and I had a great time climbing the stairs. The top of the palace was at the top of the mountain. Once we got to the top, Hayden and I decided that we wanted to go back and count the stairs, so we went all the way down, then back up again. (Adam waited at the top…lazy bum). In total, there were 288 stairs on one path and 356 on the other.   After looking around at the top of the mountain for a while, we went down the other side to check out the area. Unfortunetly, in order to get back to the gate, we had to go all the way back up and then down AGAIN. We figure that Hayden and I must have done at least 1,000 steps…we certainly got our cardio for the day! Here are some more cool pictures from the palace.

After we left the Summer Palace, we went to the Temple of Heaven. Laugh at me if you want, but I liked that this is the building that Disney modeled the “China Pavilion” at Epcot after. 🙂 It was also a very cool complex. Lots of different temples that all had different significance. The Temple of Good Harvest was impressive, the paintings and carvings inside of the temples in amazing. For some reason, Hayden continues to be a bit of a spectacle…we have had at least 5 different people/groups ask for pictures with him and several other people stop to say hi to him and tell him how handsome he is. He’s pretty sure that he’s famous in China, but doesn’t know why. We explained to him that it’s probably unusual for people to see Americans, especially kids out and about. We have seen quite a few other tourists, but they are pretty much in groups and just shuttle from one tour bus to another, we don’t see many other white people (or Hispanics) in the subways.

Hayden got to choose Tuesday’s activity, so we went to the Water Cube in the Olympic Park. They turned the aquatic center into a huge indoor water park…it was pretty fun. There were several big slides, a bunch of kids slides, a wave pool, a lazy river and a big hot tub (although it wasn’t really that hot). We had a good time relaxing and after about 4 hours in the water (it was nice and warm), then we decided to head back to the hotel early to catch up on Hayden’s homework and to start planning our trip to the Great Wall tomorrow.

I’m definitely starting to think that we need to work more “relax” days into the itinerary, but it’s really hard when there is so much to see and we know that we probably won’t get the chance to come back again.

March 4. 2015

We made it! We’re so excited to be in China after what was a crazy, long flight. I will never complain again about the flight from Orlando to Seattle. 🙂  We left Orlando and it took just over 3 hours to get to Toronto, Canada. Once we were there, we had a 7 hour layover…luckily, we were able to sleep for a while in the airport. There was also a decent restaurant right near the terminal, so we had breakfast and lunch without having to go too far. Once we left Toronto, we got lucky because the nice lady next to Hayden switched seats with me so that we could all sit together. The flight had TVs with movies at each seat, so the time went by fast enough. The flight was over 14 hours, but Hayden was a trooper, so that definitely helped. It was actually pretty cool because we flew over the top of the Earth and had an awesome view of the Arctic! Hayden loved that!!

We had our first Chinese meal on the plane…Cup of Noodles…lol. Even if it wasn’t exactly “authentic”, at least we got to practice with chopsticks.

Once we made it here, we hired a car to take us to the hotel which ended up being a great decision. At first, we were pretty sure we got taken because a taxi or the train were quite a bit cheaper, but it turned out that at rush hour, the train is REDICULOUSLY crowded and there was a 1.5-2 hour wait just to get a taxi. After all of the travel, we were fine paying a little more to get to the hotel and get settled.

Today (our first full day), we went to the Yu Yuan Gardens…it was beautiful! Pictures can’t capture how pretty it was inside. It was overcast and a little chilly, but the gardens are inside of a wall, so there wasn’t much wind. There were lots of different buildings with artwork and antique furniture which I’m sure are even older than the US. My only complaint is that everything was written in Chinese characters, so we couldn’t read a thing. (I guess it’s pretty selfish to assume that things would be written in English!)

After that, we had tea in the oldest remaining Tea House in China! It was very cool, but insanely over-priced (which we didn’t realize until we already sat down). We were a little depressed about a $20 cup of tea, but chalked it up to an experience that we will never get again.

There was a huge shopping area just outside of there, so we walked around for a while before going to the People’s Square. The People’s Square turned out to be a big mall (we were thinking it was more of a historical place). It worked out fine because we found a good place to eat and relax for a while. They had clean restrooms (with Western toilets and toilet paper), and we found a good Noodle Shop, so we were happy. Hayden has discovered that he loves Chinese food and he wants to live here when he grows up. 🙂

So far, so good, but lots and lots of adventures still to come!