The Road to Number Four: Beijing- Day 2

Today we met Angela again at 7:30 a.m. To head off for a busy day of sightseeing. Another WACAP couple joined us. First we headed to Ti An Amen Square. At 8 am, the place was wall to wall people. It was CRAZY!! From there we walked to the Forbidden City. This is the inner ring of Beijing. It is built on a ring system, with 7 rings (similar to a beltway) and the center of it is the Forbidden City where the emperor of China lived. It has SO MUCH history and the buildings are magnificent. The emperor and the empress did not reside in the same buildings and the emperor would attend to different business in different buildings. It took nearly 2 hrs to walk through the grounds and we did not wander to the side buildings, we took the straight path.

After the Forbidden City we headed out of town to the Great Wall. We stopped and had a traditional Roasted Peking Duck lunch on our way. It was supposed to be a 2 hr trip but the traffic was so awful it took 3 hrs to get to the section we were going to. We rode a chairlift up to the wall and then hiked along it for a good bit. It was so amazing to think it was built thousands of years ago and that it took 500 yrs to complete. After hiking it we rode toboggans down to the bottom, that was a highlight of our trip! We then started the journey back to Beijing, which took another 3 hrs.

We made it to the Chinese Acrobat show with 15 min to spare! Those people were amazing to watch and so flexible! The show ended at 8 :30. Angela brought Chinese takeout back to us at the hotel. We finished packing up and went to bed right after eating. We've been so surprised that the Chinese food in Beijing is not much different than the Chinese food we get at home.

Tomorrow, Angela picks us up at 5 am to head to the airport and fly to Lanzhou, where we will meet Rebecca Mei in the afternoon.

Ti An Amen Square