Day 6- Exploring Beijing

On our last real day in the city we got to explore Beijing on our own. The Greens and us decided that we would take it easy in the morning and then go out for lunch, then get ready to go to our cities the next day. It was a pretty relaxed day, and we were glad to be able to explore on our own. We didn't go far, just a few streets over from our hotel.

We had luch at a korean BBQ. It is like a buffet where you choose what you want to make. You take your meats and veggies back to your table where there is a small heating unit where you cook your food. It is really good and it was good to be able to choose what we ate.

Later that night the Greens wanted to rest, but Jon and I were still feeling like an adventure, so we went out to see what Beijing had to offer at night. We found another street market type thing with a bunch of shops along the way and a lot of food stands. Here we got bamboo juice, which you should try if you ever get the chance. It is a lot like sugar cane juice, but more mild and kind of creamy. I liked it a lot, but I haven't seen it since.

The street that we went down.

Day 5- Night market

After going to the summer palace, we had the whole night to spare. We heard that some of the group was going to the night market, so we decided to go with them. It turned out to be just down the street. It seemed like a hopping place with mmore modern buildings and more of a night life than we had seen anywhere else. 

Here is the actual street market that we went to, it is down a little alley off to the side. The smells here are something else. You pass by one stand and it smells amazing, then at the next you wish that you had never been born with nostrils. We found  out (many weeks after visiting the street market) that a large part of what we were smelling was fried stinky tofu. That stuff smells worse than some of the sewage smells we came across in Beijing. It is hard to choke it down if you smell it at all before hand, but that is a different story a different day. 

 The market was beautiful with lots of colors and interesting things that you could try. I have listed the things that we tried down below. It was quite the adventure, and I would do it again in a heartbeat if I could get over the smells.

Starfish. We didn't eat this, but it was cool to find out you could.

cicadas

I think these are butterfly chrysalides....entomology ruined me. 

Scorpion. We did eat these. Not bad, just crunchy. 

Snake. Definately ate this. It was actually really good. 

Mmmmm...... snake

Scorpion.

An assortment of lizards, star fish, scorpion, etc...

Manto bread shaped like animals.

Baby chicken, obviously we ate this. Tasted like BBQ chicken. :)

Snail, yup we ate it. 

Black and white sesame burgers.

 On our way back we were not quite full, and we kind of wanted some normal food after all of the crazy things that we had just tried, so we stopped in at McDonalds, which is surprisingly upscale here in China, and got some burgers. The menu here is totally different, I would have a picture of it, but I got yelled at for having my camera out trying to take photos. They have a lot of chicken sandwiches, they have chicken nuggets, but they have dark meat, and they have a lot of items with rice or porrage. One of my favorite things that they have in the Chinese McDonalds is their soy milk drink. It changed my life. And that is the story of the night market. Life changing.

Day 5- Summer palace

This day was pretty relaxed for us. There was not much to do but wander around a huge palace. I don't think we even made it to the main part of the palace because the place is so huge. There is a river surrounding the palace, and you can take boat rides around. We decided that instead, we would climb the hill and go on a boat ride across the lake on the other side. The view was incredible, and the palace spectacular. 

This place was so large that we could not get the whole
thing in the picture, this is only the first steps.

The architecture here was pretty amazing

This is made out of bamboo! The guy was making dragons
and flowers and all sorts of stuff. It was neat to watch.

This was a man making pitures out of words. Chinese or English. It was awesome to watch him work with such fluency.

This was the boat that we took across the river where
there was an island.

A guy followed us and made this for Jon. It is supposed to be
a portrait with the date, and summer palace written on the side.
We were shocked and we thought it was funny, so we
bought the plate from him. I'm not sure we will bring it home,
however it is a great likeness to Jon.

The island that was mentioned before.

We thought that these were pretty cool. We thought that they would only be 50 RMB to take and we would get to keep the photos. They were tricky though, as they are in China, and they duped us into taking two poses and charging us 50 for each pose. We were upset that they tricked us, but we were still glad that we experienced royal clothing.

 

We really enjoyed the summer palace and all of the weird things that happened to us there. We even enjoyed the very long walk home because of the wrong exit that we took that led us to a totally different subway station than the one that we got off of. We found out the hard way that tickets that you buy at one station will not work for all stations. Luckily it is low cost to get a new ticket, it was an adventure getting back on our own like that though. Asking people where the subway is without them speaking English is very interesting. You have to mime a lot of things, and that is one that is very tough. We made it though, and we were glad to experience another full day in Beijing.