Beijing

After killing the afternoon in Xi'an I hopped on my train to Beijing. It left early, so it was a good thing I was at the train station early as there seems to be no warning for these things.

I have since decided that I will not be able to travel to Shanghai this trip. It would be possible to take a sleeper train there see the city for the day and take a sleeper train back, but after my ride to Beijing it is evident that my body cannot handle another train ride like that one.

I followed the directions e-mailed to me to my hostel and found it with little difficulty. My only difficulty came when I found that the street that the hostel was on was full of construction. Another traveller pointed me in the right direction and I did what I could to squeeze under the scaffolding and stay on the path so that I did not fall into the excavation.

The day was still young and my hostel is in an ideal location so I headed to Tieneneman Square. Mao's Memorial was closed so I continued through the Square towards the Forbidden City. The Square is quite enormous, and beautiful. There is a monument in the middle and a very stong police presence, you need to pass security clearance just to get there.

Onto the Forbidden City I was able to save more money with my student card as I got in. I was there for 4.5 hours and I still did not see it all. Part of the park closed early and I was forced to leave that section unexplored. I will return tomorrow to finish it off. It was amazing to see such a place and what it has really made me realize is that I am far to practical to be an Emperor. I could not imagine half of the rooms that they came up with, not to mention the rooms I did not see.

Somehow I managed to make it back to the hostel. I had forgotten my painkillers in my haste to leave and when I returned it was not too soon. It was a tough few hours, but after the painkillers kicked back in I was good to go.

I went out for supper and sat down at a random restaurant. I did not look at the menu but it was a little more than I would have like to have paid. It did not matter. I was not moving from that spot.

I had Donkey for supper and it was fantastic. It was a little expensive, but if I can I will go back there. The flavour was great and the service was quite decent for China.

Fantastic.

On the way home I stocked up on supplies, supplies that I used today as we hiked the Great Wall. We did not go to a tourist location, in fact we went to a location with no name that is just referred to as the "Secret Wall." The entire time we were there we saw only one other guide (the husband of our 73 year old guide) and only two other tourists. None of that segment of the wall has been restored at all. It truly was something to see.

I do wonder about the other segments of the wall that are so highly regarded, but this one was the right one for me.

After we were done at the wall we went down to their village and had a vegetarian lunch. I ate crackers and rice.

Tonight we are going to the night market. I fully intend to try some of every different kind of meat I can find. Scorpion here I come. Snake, aww yea. This will be great.

Hopefully I do not get sick.

Only one way to find out.