Beijing...Day Three

Our last full day there was hitting up most of the sights in the city. These first set of pictures I caught from the tour bus back from the great wall.


Not sure what this building is but it looked cool.



The CCTV building right next to out hotel. It an awesome structure that I couldn't really capture, it has two main towers and they are linked together by an L shape of several floors. It will definitely look amazing when it's done.


This is the only Olympic venue we saw, it's where the tennis will be played.


We started the day mighty early when Joel came down to our room to let us know he was off to shop. It's good luck for vendors to make their first sale and so they are more inclined to give a bargain, this was exactly what we wanted. Shelly and I quickly showered and hit the buffet downstairs before taking off to shop. Being without cellphones it was a risk splitting the group up but we made a plan to all meet up at 1:00 outside the Forbidden city under Mao's portrait. I gave my camera to Saejin because he and Chan Young didn't feel like shopping and instead went to the Summer Palace. Tony knew where we were shopping so he came a found us before heading to the Forbidden City.

This is where our immaculate plan of meeting up went down the hair clogged drain. Meeting two black haired Koreans in front of the busiest entrance of the busiest tourist site in one of the busiest cities of China was next to impossible. When you add in bags brimming with shopping and a Full blazing sun, it got annoying fast. We did wait around for forty minutes before we chose to head in and get the tour done with.



Luckily for us Seajin and Chan Young were Korean tourist and managed to rush their way through the place quickly and while we were mid way into (a boring, boring palace) the started calling out our names. Even better for us they kept up their Koreaness and wanted to head off for massages so they took all our stuff back to the hotel so we could finish walking around the palace.


After leaving the back entrance (where the palace is much much better) we hailed a taxi and went back to Tianeman Square. I loved this place just because it's what I first learnt about China. Obviously a square is boring but seeing the vastness of the place along with all the troops guarding it was a highlight of the trip.




It was a long hot day but after making use of the shower and tub in the hotel room we went out for Peking duck at some very, very famous restaurant.

Not sure of the name here but there were a bunch of famous politicians and "stars" pictures up of who had eaten at this place.

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Not wanting to chance a line up we made reservation for a private room and payed a bit more for the food but it was great having your beer filled each time it dipped below the mid point by our personal waitress.


After some shaddy courses (see the menu below) the doors to the room split open to have the chefs cut up the duck in front of us. It was definitely the best part of the meal.


Wondering what the worst soup ever is? Duck tongue and snail takes the cake.


It was my first trip abroad (from Korea) with a lot of friends and a great trip. Sadly Shelly is off back to Canada soon for school but the rest of us will be here for more good times.