We didn’t end up arriving at our temporary home until late at night, so we grabbed some McDonalds (which is SUPER cheap over here, as in, $4 for a large meal cheap), had a nice hot shower and hit the pillows.
The next day we woke very excited to start exploring, until, tragedy struck my poor toe. Tragedy in this case being the bed frame. I hit is so hard that we are 99% certain its broken. This incident made the days ahead much tougher, especially in peak hour in Beijing (which is by far the WORST peak hour we have ever experienced) I soldiered on, only having an occasional little break down. After I took some panadaol and wiped my eyes, Justin taped my toe and I limped my way to Tianeman Square, determined to not let it ruin our trip. We spent hours (like, 6 hours) exploring both Tianeman Square and The Forbidden City. We headed home and stopped in at the local market across the road from our apartment block, something that became the nightly ritual for us.
Something which we absolutely love about Beijing is their awesome ways of getting around. When you arrive you are constantly turning your neck to see the wonderful 3 wheeled cars, little 'tuk-tuks' and, electric 2 seated bikes. We have learnt that these however, can be super dangerous as they as so quiet that you don't hear them until they are honking their little horn right behind you
We wandered down the touristy drag of the wall (which was no were near as busy as we had seen on tv shows) until we came to a dead end, beyond the bushes we could see a sign that read “No public past this point” but beyond that we could see an unrestored part of the wall that was just calling our name. We decided to go for it. We jumped through the brick window and headed along the dirt path and we are so glad we did. This path takes you along the real Great Wall Of China, it is rocky, damaged and absolutely amazing. This day turned into the best day of our trip so far, we spent 3 hours exploring the wall, entering little tunnels and finding brick windows which gave us views that made us speechless (that is pretty impressive, to leave me speechless.)
Our last full day in wonderful Beijing had arrived. We decided we would spend it in Tiantan Park, which is really huge! We spent the full day walking around, and didn’t even get to see the whole thing. When I think about it though, we did stop a lot, distracted by the sword demonstration by locals, local ribbon twirling and even just to lie on the grass for a rest. I better go, I hear a key in the front door, meaning our host is about to arrive, don't want to seem rude. |