Beijing is completely different from Shanghai! Despite the extreme dry air and pollution, it was amazing! I travelled on a Semester at Sea sponsored trip with a group of other SASers and I met so many fun new people through it!
It started out a little rocky, I was held back from leaving Shanghai at first because immigration missed stamping my passport so I had to race to the airport after my group had already left without me. I made it just in time though, and it was a fun adventure trying to navigate through the airport and check-in by myself.
One we got to Beijing, however, the days were jam-packed! The first day we went to a tea house and tried lots of different flavors (my favorite was lichii tea) but it was more of a tourist trap because it was wicked expensive. We saw the Temple of Heaven, went to a great restaurant, and walked around the silk market for a little while. It was basically sensory overload with all of the items they were selling. You could get practically anything you wanted- pearls, ipods, buddhas, you name it! I have to admit, it was kinda fun when the vendors called out to you "pretty girl, lovely lady, you'd look great in the jeans!" I couldn't help but think, 'Aw, you noticed it too!' (Hehe, just kidding!) It was a lot of fun though, and the group came back to the bus sharing bargain victory stories (although some were anything but victories)
The second day was mostly touring Tiananmen Square and the forbidden city which, although was certainly magnificent, got a little monotonous. All of the architecture is identical, even to the Temple of Heaven, but it was so cool just to be in places I've only read about in textbooks. The second half of the day was spent cleaning an orphanage and playing with the kids. They were so cute and seemed genuinely happy that we were there. Of course, one kid in our group (who shall remain nameless) is a stalker photographer and was taking pictures of students sweeping the dormitories and got a pice of dust stuck in his eye... I felt so bad for him! He even had to go to the hospital the next day, but I'm pretty sure all of us really appreciate his photos of the trip (he takes really wonderful pictures- i might have to steal a few)
Our last day was probably my favorite. The Great Wall. Words cannot quite do it justice. It is approximately 5,000 miles long, although we only walked a small portion of it (my legs were secretly thanking me). After riding a gondola up to the top and then walking along it we took a toboggan back down. It was so cool! it was a metal track and you could control the speed so of course a group of 5 of us took that as a challenge to see how fast we could sled down it. Needless to say the security people were screaming at us as we whizzed past us. Our group was so fast that we caught up with a women towards the end and accidentally rammed into her... sending the baby she was holding flying...Oops! feeling bad we apologized, but also secretly felt like she really slowed us down. So we went up and did it again!
The next morning we had to leave for the airport at 4:45am. So why go to bed when we could just stay out all night? Good idea? In retrospect, probably not... it made for a rough next day, but it was a blast and I definitely was able to rally to go out the next day or two!
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