After getting back to Kaifeng from the Xi'an trip, we had a chance to rest for a few days before heading off on the next adventure: Beijing! The Tims and I got an overnight "sleeper train" from Kaifeng to Beijing. We woke up in Beijing to blue skies: quite a strange phenomenon in one of the world’s smoggiest cities. I took the opportunity to take a few pictures of the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square (both of which were within walking distance of our awesome hostel) The next day, we met up with Ann who had already been in the city to check out the forbidden city and the summer palace. Here are the pictures from those places
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| The Tims on our train! We all had top bunks, but were able to sit on some small seats until we climbed up to go to sleep! |
The TOP bunk, as you can see this has very little clearance. Lying on my side, I could barely lift my elbow before hitting the ceiling. It actually wasn't that bad. The bed was hard as the name "hard bunk" implies, but the gentle movement of the train allowed me to sleep pretty soundly.
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| This is just one of the smaller train stations in Beijing. The West railway station is where we came in. For some strange reason, the Beijing subway lines do not connect with this station yet, so we had to hike a couple of blocks to get to the closest station. |
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| an old church near our hostel |
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| one of the corner towers of the Forbidden City |
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| Some older/ traditional style housing adjacent the forbidden city across a frozen lake. It was quire enjoyable to watch the Australian Tims react to their first sighting of ice (outside of the freezer)! They were like children! |
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| The south entrance to the Forbidden City |
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| Mao's picture at the northernmost part of Tiananmen Square |
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| Standing almost in the middle of the largest public square in the world |
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| Under constant surveillance by countless video cameras |
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| We had nothing to do one night and we wanted to see some cool things at night, It was suggested that we go check ou Olympic park. so... here is the water cube where the water events were held during the 2008 Beijing Olympics |
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| This is the "Bird's Nest" the stadium for the track and field events |
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| Another picture of the man himself (and a lion, because lions are cool) |
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| On the second day, we scheduled to meet Ann at the forbidden city at 10. due to her phone running out of credit and her waking up late, we had to wait a bit for her to come. As we stood outside of the gate, many people thought that we (the strange looking foreigners) were an excellent photo opportunity. Some people tried to snap photos of us without our noticing, others asked if they could take them with us. This is a group of middle school girls and their teachers who decided that they wanted to take a pic too. After about 30 similar pictures being taken before this one, I finally asked if they could take a picture with MY camera. This may seems strange, that people come up and take pictures with us, but this is a fairly common experience... It is an odd kind of unearned celebrity |
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| ONE of several throne rooms in the forbidden city |
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| Some Bronze Lions guarding one of the throne rooms. the lion closest to the camera is a female (she has a cub under her paw) the lion in the back is a male (he has a globe in his paw) this, according to Ann is how to specify the gender of the lions. |
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| The northern exit to the forbidden city |
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| a near bronze peacock outside the summer palace |
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