Day Two- Part 4

After lunch, we headed back outside of town to go to the Summer Palace. First impression… WOW! There are A LOT of people here!!! Seriously—it was like wall to wall people. And like everywhere else in China… so many people were smoking. I was a little overwhelmed at first because of the number of people and the smell of the smoke- which I’m very sensitive too. I decided to keep an open mind and it really did get better. Once we got past the first few stops, it seemed to open up a bit and everyone was allowed to spread out a little bit more.

We couldn’t go into any of the buildings, but we were able to walk around outside and look at everything. I like this picture of one of these buildings with the uniformed guard walking by.

As I mentioned previously, we attracted quite a bit of attention everywhere we went. People would stop and stare at us. Some non-chalantly, and some just out right staring and not trying to hide it! Here was one part of the day where we weren’t attracting the most stares… a group of monks walked right by us. Everyone stopped what they were doing to stare. Including us, I must admit. It’s not everyday we see a sight like this! It was a really cool thing to experience.

Beautiful temple in the distance.

Boats lined up and overlooking the man made lake. I can’t remember or recall everything we learned about the Summer Palace this day… but you really should look up some of the history about it online. It’s really, really fascinating!!!

So. Many. People.

This was a LONG hallway. It went on FOREVER! All of the paintings were hand painted and each one was different from the others. There were many thousands. It was beautiful.

Close up of one of the paintings.

In between each of the hallways, there was a separate room with more paintings which adjoined the next hallway. Here’s the ceiling in one of the little rooms.

Looking down the next hallway. They were all open air.

Overlooking the water across to the bridge.

Gorgeous temple.

Overlooking the Princess Dowager’s boat.

Boats on the other side of the big Princess’ boat.

Some more gorgeous sights on the way to the exit. The whole property was just breathtakingly beautiful.

I am so glad we got to experience the Summer Palace. You just can’t imagine how sprawling, how beautiful and how incredibly over the top it was to have a property like this just for the Princess Dowager and her family to vacation. It was just beautiful!

Day Two- Part 3- Around Town- Beijing

After we left the Great Wall, we drove back into town to eat lunch at a fantastic traditional restaurant.

It was on a very crowded street and the parking lot was packed. I was surprised that our driver was able to get his van into the parking lot at all!

We walked in and were in awe of how neat and how beautiful the restaurant was. We definitely felt under dressed in our “touristy” comfortable clothes!

At the restaurant, a wedding had just taken place and they were cleaning up from the wedding. As we were waiting for our lunch, we looked over and saw the bride sitting across the room. Rachel and I decided we’d go over and ask to have our picture made with her. She was just stunningly beautiful.

Cheers! No ice, but at least the cans had been somewhat chilled :)

The food is served one dish at a time and placed on a large turntable in the center of the table. Everyone just turns the table and serves themselves from each of the dishes and the meal is eaten family style. We ordered several dishes to try from a picture menu.

The little dough balls were filled with a figgy type center. None of us liked them. The fried rice was delicious, as was the shrimp in the garlicy sauce. We were really excited about the noodles, but they weren’t what we had hoped for. They were cold and even a bit spicy. We ate a few bites but didn’t love them. We also ordered duck. There wasn’t much meat on the bones and the meat tasted pretty gamey too. Overall we got enough to fill up our bellies and it was a very neat cultural experience. We even had one lady come up to us and start talking to us. She wanted to practice her English. She spoke very well!

Jason took several really nice pictures of the scenery along the way. It’s cool to see what’s normal life there is quite different from life here.

 

 

Day Two- Part Two- Beijing

The part of our short stay in Beijing that I was most excited about was going to the Great Wall. To me, it symbolizes China. It almost seemed like a trip to China without seeing the Wall would be a loss. We didn’t originally plan to go to Beijing before getting Khloe. In fact, it wasn’t until after we had our Travel Approval and we were purchasing our plane tickets (less than 2 weeks before we were leaving) that we realized we were going to be able to! It was such an amazing blessing! We really wanted to be able to do some sightseeing in Beijing first, but we knew we’d have to leave a day earlier and that it would cost us more money. We didn’t even have all of the travel funds we needed yet as it was, so there was no way we were going to be able to afford it. I was really sad at first, but as the months passed by, I came to terms with it and realized that we’d be back one day and I could see everything I wanted to.

As we were pricing our plane tickets with our travel agent, we were stunned to realize that by leaving on a Friday instead of a Thursday, the tickets were going to go up about $500 EACH! So, we decided that to save the money, we would go ahead and leave a day early. Then we thought since we were leaving a day early anyway, we’d ask her to price the tickets to Beijing just to see what the price difference would be. To our amazement, the tickets into Beijing were ANOTHER $500 EACH cheaper! WHAT?!?!?! We saved $1,000 per ticket to be able to go to Beijing a day early. God is so good. We used some of the saved money that we’d set aside for the plane tickets to pay for our extra time in Beijing (which didn’t cost much!).

I still get goose bumps when I tell this story of how God blessed us with something that was totally unnecessary but still incredibly special to us. We give him all the glory!

After we saw the Bird’s Nest and the Water Cube, we got back in the van and headed to the Great Wall. The drive out of town was beautiful. I loved getting to see the mountains. I’ve never even been out west in the US, so I’ve never seen mountains like that.  I was in awe!

Here’s a couple pictures of the mountains as we drove

Here’s a description of the section of the wall we went to

Entrance

So beautiful

I’m at the Great Wall of China!!!

Group photo

Let me just start by saying that we had the most fun here. Probably more fun than should’ve been allowed :) Previously, our in our short time in the city, I thought the local people seemed mostly unhappy. When we got to the Great Wall, though, everyone was so happy! Taking pictures, visiting, smiling huge, beautiful smiles. I absolutely loved it here!

I can’t tell you how many photos the guys photo bombed. I was sure we were going to get thrown out :) But you know what, everyone loved it! People were even asking to take pictures with us :) There were very few westerners there that day and I think they were a bit fascinated by the fair skin, blonde (or in my case super curly) hair. It was just really fun.

Scott and Jason jumped behind these sweet ladies as they were having their picture taken by a friend. As soon as they saw the boys standing behind them, they started laughing and grabbing the boys to get pictures with them. They each took turns taking the picture, so they could each have a picture with them with the handsome American boys :)

Rachel and I loved these ladies. They were too cool to wear their blue tour group hats normally :)

Absolutely precious.

This was awesome. We are posing cute for Jason to take our picture and literally as he pushes the button on the camera, this lady’s flag whacks me right in the face. Here’s me being all awkward and making hilarious faces—standing next to my gorgeous Barbie doll look a like friend :) Typical, goofy Erica :) We laughed so hard I didn’t know if I could compose myself for another picture :) Everyone around us was even laughing!

Ok, let’s try that again! Cute!

Going up!

It was a brisk day in the City,  but it was downright COLD at the Wall! There’s leftover ice and snow to prove it!

I stopped after the 3rd tower. The other 3 climbed all the way they could. It was only open to the 5th or 6th tower.

Here’s Jason being silly at the top :)

He almost met his demise while he took pictures ;)

But he got some really cool ones!

My legs were already hurting (and I didn’t even climb to the top!) so at one point, I turned around and walked backwards :) Here I am waving to J.

As we were standing towards the beginning of this section waiting for our guide, these precious gentlemen came and asked if they could  have a picture with us. Made our day. They were totally getting fresh with us. Jason tried to offer a kiss on the cheek from me to the man on the end. The man was totally all for it and I just giggled and shook my head. Then I shot “the look” to my husband :) But we made the old men giggle and we thought it was fun too!

There were some beautiful temples on the grounds

Inside one of the temples

Here we are with our wonderful guide Rocky. We all LOVED him!!

 

What an incredible day!!! I will never forget getting to climb the Great Wall of China and all the happy, beautiful people we met that day!