Beijing Day 3: The Great Wall

Well, what Sam said is true, visiting the Great Wall has been a life-long dream of mine. I had a strange fascination with the Wall when I was little (I can still see the small, blue, hardback book my parents bought me). I guess it's the allure of something you can see from space, but that was built without the assistance of any "modern" construction conveniences. The idea of this wall snaking though the countryside for thousands of years (construction on the first sections of the Wall began in the 6th century BC) just captivates me. In any case, finally getting to see it and walk it was a really amazing experience.

We decided not to take our hostel's tour because we wanted to set our own time frame on the wall. We also decided not to go to Badaling, the most often visited section of the Great Wall because we wanted something a bit less, well, crowded. Instead we took a bus (and then a taxi) to the Mutianyu section, about 70km northeast of Beijing. Overall, I think it was a good decision, and getting there and back was not too difficult. Just make sure that if you do this, when you get off the bus at Huairou you set a return price with your cab driver before you take off as your cab driver will sit and wait for you while you are on the Wall.

So, we finally arrived at Mutianyu and took the cable car up to the top. It was absolutely gorgeous, and I will now stop talking and provide photo evidence of our journey! (As usual, more over at the picture page.)

Ummm... so. many. stairs.

What trip to the Great Wall would be completely without a thoroughly exauhsted, ridiculously dorky high-five photo as a capper? Obviously not this one!

It's about time.....

I am sure that is what you are saying right about now.  It has been months since either of us posted a good blog.   I just posted Day 4 of our China Trip, hopefully this will inspire us to get Days 2 and 3 written as well.  In the meantime, we have just about 3 1/2 months before we touch down on US soil again.  Our contracts end Feb 21.  In between now and then we are planning a makeshift Thanksgiving dinner.  Since we have no oven, we might have to resort to turkey lunch meat sandwiches, but mashed potatoes, gravy, store bought rolls and sweet potatoes will all be present.  We inherited a small Christmas tree from a teacher that is leaving, so that will be a nice adornment in one of our apartments. In January we have a 4 day weekend, which we will spend in Japan. And then when our contracts are up on the 21st of February we are planning to delay our flights out of Korea for about 10 days so we can hit Vietnam and/or Cambodia and/or Thailand before come home.  

With some of our fellow teachers leaving in the coming week the reality of how much we miss our family and friends has made itself more evident.  There are alot of things we don't miss back home(paying for gas, driving to the store instead of walking around the corner, greasy food) but family and friends can not be substituted for.  We really look forward to seeing everyone and catching up when we get back.  In the meantime, there is a number that you can call me(Sam) at.  It is not long distance, it will call my computer, and if I am not online, you can leave a message. The number is 469-277-6758.  More info later on Alison's number.  

Oops

Yeah, we stalled out a bit on the China trip... some day you will get to relive days 2-4, I promise! We've had a lot going on lately, Mama Hughey came to visit and I dragged her all over the city, we've had some staff changes at work that have kept Sam busy, and general life in the city has been very distracting-in-a-good-way. And some day I'll do an entire post on the laundry ordeal that is the bain of my Korea-life.

We can't believe that we have just 4.5 months left in Seoul! I'm already making a list of all of the things we must see before we leave!! For those of you still sticking with us (thank you!) we hope to have many more posts coming up soon. We miss and love you!

Beijing Day 4

No, you did not mysteriously miss Day 2 and Day 3,  I am just skipping ahead because Day 2 is skipping my memory at the moment, possibly because Day 4 was my favorite day in Beijing.  As for Day 3, Alison will be the author of that post because the visiting the Great Wall was her lifelong dream, so my words could not do it justice.  So here is Day 4.  

Monday was our last day in Beijing.  Our flight left at 6:45 pm so we had until about 3:00 pm to wander around before we had to get a cab from our hostel.  Alison and Katrina went to Silk Street to do some more shopping.   I on the other hand wanted to see some different parts of the city. So I rented a bike from our hostel for a mere 4 dollars and set out to explore the city.  I had looked at a map the night before and plotted some destinations I wanted to see.   Olympic Park, a city park(so I thought), Pearl Market, and Snack Street(again) were on my list.  I thought I could do math AND use my finger as an accurate means of measuring distance on the map, turns out I can not do either.  What I had thought would be a 10 mile journey at most, turned out to be a 30 mile one.  The legs were a little wobbly the next day, but even after I finished riding, I had not realized how far I had gone.  I had read somewhere that Beijing was as flat as a Mahjong table. Corny, but oh so true!  It was so flat, and every street had a massive bike lane, and a seperate set of lights just for bikes at every intersection.  I have to admit that pulling out into traffic to pass buses that were picking up passengers was a little nerve racking, but the cars in the road actually respected the bikes and gave them the right of way.  I guess that is how it works in a city where literally millions of people commute on their bikes everyday.  It was also thrilling knowing that when I was on that bike I was controlling where I was going.  I don't miss the cost of having to put gas in a car, but I do miss being able to go where I want to go, when I want to go, and being able to stop when I want to stop.  Being on a bike for those 5 hours gave me that.  It was a lot more fun than I had expected, and I wish I could have done it for a couple more days.  Here is a map of Beijing.  I put some place markers in Blue, and my bike path in Red.  

View Larger Map

Beijing Day 1

It's true, I did put a moratorium on Sam's blogging until we had pictures because, really, how do you explain things like The Great Wall in words?  Even the pictures we captured don't quite do these places justice.   As Sam already described our first day I thought I'd just give you a quick recap with pictures.  We're working on getting some of the 1200 pictures we took over the weekend up on the picture page, so check there if you want to see more!

As Sam said we really hit the ground running when we got to Beijing.  We stayed in a great hostel, The Red Lantern House.  It was a great deal... in a historic hutong, room for 3 (using the shared bathroom) for $33 a night.  The front desk staff was super helpful as well and directed us to lunch and a bus to the Summer Palace, which is about 45 minutes north of the city.  Here are few shots from our journey:

The Summer Palace was absolutely gorgeous.  We are quite used to Palaces in Korea, which are generally pretty small in scale and were somewhat unprepared for the sheer scale of the Summer Palace.  We were pretty wiped out from traveling all day, but easily could have spent more time there than we had.


After the palace we decided to head over to Tienaman Square.  We got a bit turned around coming out of the subway (which is in no way as well marked as Seoul's), but had fun exploring the area on the west side of the square for a bit.

When we got closer to the square we realized that traffic was being re-directed and there was no way to actually get into the square as the underground tunnel was blocked off.  There was also a pretty big crowd gathering, but we couldn't figure out what was going on.

Then we saw the guards marching across the road and realized that we were there for one of the two times a day that they bring everything to a halt in order to raise and lower the giant flag.  Kind of cool to see.

By this point we were famished and decided to hoof it over to Snack Street, which Sam filled you about.  After that we headed back to the hostel and promptly passed out!  The day was a great start to our trip... but the next couple of days just kept getting better and better!  Be sure to check back soon for the "Day 2" installment :)

Sunday Night In China

Alison has requested that I wait to fully blog about the rest of China until she can add pictures to give y'all the full effect. Here is a sneak preview though......shhh

We went to...
The Forbidden Palace
Tiananmen Square
The Great Wall
Pearl Market


We ate...
Scorpion
Seahore
Meat on a stick
Giant Eggrolls
More meat on a stick
Candied fruit on a stick

We bought...
alot

Hello From China

We made it!!! We are currently in Beijing. We flew in yesterday morning, dropped our stuff at the hostel and headed for the city. Yesterday we made it to the Summer Palace, which is absouletly enormous compared to the palaces in Korea, but parts of them are not as well kept. Korea has done an excellent job of preservation and upkeep with their palaces. The Chinese have not done so with all part of the Summer Palace, which actually made it more interesting. All the fading paint, cracks in the walls, heads missing from statues, and worn down stairs gave the place a lot more character and made it seem more authentic. We then made our way to Tianenman Square in time to see the lowering of the flag. For dinner we found the "Snack Market." It was about 1 acre of food stalls with all sorts of goodness. Grilled corn, giant eggrolls, candied fruit, and EVERYTHING on a stick. I mean everything....Squid, lamb, seahorse, scorpion, starfish, octopi, etc. We were just plain hungry last night so we kept to the normal stuff, but the stranger items will have to be tasted before we leave. Don't worry, there will be plenty of pictures of that adventure. Today we are going to the Forbidden City, then maybe some shopping and possibly an acrobatic or Kung Fu show tonight. Sunday will be dominated by the Great Wall, which we are really getting excited about. It has been Alison's dream to visit the Great Wall since childhood, and it is the main reason that we chose China as our only trip outside of Korea this year. I think we are going to try to update everyday while we are here since there is so much that we are doing, it will be hard to remember after we get back. So check back again tomorrow.