We got to our hotel on Friday evening around 5pm or so. We knew that despite the fact that we’d only had about 5 hours of sleep in the past 48 hours and all we wanted to do was collapse into bed, we knew that it was in our best interest to stay up until at least 7 or 8 that way we wouldn’t wake up quite so early the next morning. This was advice given to us to combat the jet lag so we took the advice. We settled into our room, sent a few “we made it” emails and realized pretty quickly that we’d never stay awake if we stayed in the room. So we decided to venture down to one of the hotel’s restaurants for dinner. It was our first real cultural experience.
We were the only Caucasian people in the whole hotel, much less this restaurant, as far as we could see. No one spoke a single bit of English. here we go- we knew we’d encounter this, so we just dove right in. :) They immediately walked us to a table and gave us picture menus. We pointed to what looked good and hoped for the best. We each ordered a coke and they brought it to us in cans with a wine glass to pour the coke into. And of course, it was hot, and they offered no ice. This was another cultural thing that we’d heard of that I was dreading. When we go out, I order EXTRA ice in my drinks! Hot coke isn’t so good to me… but we were in desperate need of some extra caffeine if we were going to stay up for at least a couple more hours.
The meal came and the food was surprisingly delicious. We ended up having a lamb dish,a spicy shrimp and vegetable dish, fried rice (which was maybe the most delicious I’ve ever had), and some meat dumplings which were fabulous. All of it was good. The 4 of us ate and ate until we couldn’t eat anymore and we still had food left!
When it came time to pay, it got a little more interesting. No one spoke English and we obviously don’t speak a lick of Chinese! We started asking who/how to pay and we got major deer in the headlights looks. Several different employees came to try to figure out what we were talking about and it didn’t help much. Finally we began doing our best charades and using motions and hand gestures and the guys whipped out the money. Now we were getting somewhere! We had been told that it wasn’t customary and therefore unnecessary to tip at restaurants in China. Both of us couples pride ourselves in being really good tippers when we eat out, so this was really hard for us and we wondered if it really was ok.
Finally, the guys decided to leave the change on the table. When we left, they noticed it and tried to chase us out with the money! We told them no, that we didn’t want it, that it was for them. You should’ve seen the confusion on their faces. They just looked down at the money, then back at us, then back at the money. We just kept walking out and left them to figure it out :) We felt comfortable about tipping and frankly we were too tired to care much. Plus the amount of CNY didn’t amount to much in US dollars. (A few days later, we all realized that in our tiredness, and the fact that we didn’t have a clear understanding of the exchange rate yet, we really did over tip. Let’s just say it would’ve been considered a really nice tip in the US where tipping is expected :) Oh well! We all decided that we really just wanted to bless them and we hoped that the sweet servers had been able to keep the money like we’d intended.)
We headed back to our rooms, I blogged a little while Jason showered. He took an Ambien and he was out before his head even hit the pillow. I decided to take my Ambien before I took my shower to give it time to kick in. I’ve never taken it before and let’s just say that I didn’t need much time for it to kick in! I felt like I couldn’t hold my head up before I even got out of the shower. I was stumbling around and half crawling around the room trying to get in the bed!
We, obviously, went right to sleep and we slept pretty good. We each woke up several times, but thanks to the meds, we were able to go right back to sleep each time. We were wide awake at 4am though- which we expected. So, we decided to just get up and start our big day. We skyped with my Mom and Dad and Rhett and Gracie and sent an email to Braden (he was unavailable to skype that day).
We got ready and headed down to the hotel’s breakfast buffet early so we could enjoy and not be in a rush. We woke up STARVING! The breakfast buffet was just as wonderful as we’d heard. So much fresh food and fresh juices to chose from. We definitely filled our bellies!
We met our AMAZING guide, Rocky, in the lobby at 7am to start our BIG, LONG, WONDERFUL day.
Here’s the outside of our hotel.
We began our day with a walk from our hotel to Tiananmen Square. It was about a 30 minute walk.
Here’s Scott, Rocky and Jason leading the way. Rachel and I were bringing up the rear taking 900,000 pictures of every little thing :)
Some sights along the way. We walked over that bridge.
Walking on the bridge.
I was in awe of all of the signs in Chinese. What a beautiful written language!
Street view
We walked past this wall, which was one of the original city walls. It is several hundred years old. The age and history that is present all around you in China is amazing. Considering we live in a country that is so young and only has a couple hundred years of history!
View of Tiananmen Square as we approached it
In Tiananmen Square looking towards the Forbidden City
All 4 of us. Behind us is the building is Chairman Mao’s Memorial Hall. It’s the mausoleum/final resting place where his body is on display in a glass case.
I love this picture of us. Look at all those hundreds and hundreds of people behind us in front of the Memorial Hall. Those are all people in line to view Chairman Mao’s body.
I was in awe of the uniformed soldiers everywhere. Not something you typically see in the US.
Forbidden City
Standing hear the Forbidden City, looking back towards Tiananmen Square. You can see Scott and Jason in the background- like playing Where’s Waldo :)
We were having so much fun, soaking in all of our amazing touristy experiences!
Walking back to the hotel
After we got back to the hotel, our driver was there with the van waiting on us. After a quick stop up to our rooms to repack our backpacks for the day, grab some snacks, etc. we hopped in the van and headed out.
First stop: The Olympic Bird’s Nest and Water Cube
We drove quite a while (Beijing is a HUGE city!!!) and then we saw it! It was so cool to get to see, in person, iconic places that you’ve seen only on tv. We jumped out and took a bunch of pictures.
This was a really neat shaped building across the street from the Olympic Venues. This was a huge hotel that had housed media, athletes, etc. during the 2008 games.
Next, we headed to a Jade Market.
This Lion was outside the front door. Later we realized that they are in front of almost all buildings! There’s always a set of 2- a male on one side and a female on the other.
This man was carving a jade family ball (which was on our list of things we wanted to purchase on our trip) so we watched for a few minutes. Very cool!
He showed us what he was working on. They start with a solid piece of jade and carve it into a ball. Then they carve the designs and then carve the interior of the ball as well and it ends up being several balls inside of each other- representing generations of families. Amazing and beautiful.
This was a huge and gorgeous, detailed carving made out of jade.
Here is the retail area. This was a HUGE room full of jewelry and other jade items for sale.
Here’s some pictures of the medals used in the 2008 Olympic games. They used jade in the medals. They were beautiful.
Here was our guide at the Jade factory.
We only bought the jade family ball here. Everything was so beautiful, but the prices were too high for us :)
This was only the beginning of our day. There was SO much more to come. You’ll have a hard time believing how much we crammed into one day! Our guide told us that most people do what we did in 1 1/2 days in 3 days! But we only had a short time there and we wanted to make the very most of every minute we had in Beijing. We can honestly say that we did. We had no down time and stayed moving!
More to come on our time in Beijing!
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