Exploration of Beijing

Well after a 14 hour flight, where it was illegal to use your phone, tablet or any other portable device during the flight, and watching a comical safety briefing that you were not allowed to photograph, we arrived in Beijing at 4am. Expecting the chaos to begin at the airport, we slowly made our way towards immigration.  The queue was a measly five people long.  Then it was down to the empty floor below and onto a train to collect our baggage some several kilometers away. As we were the only arriving flight, life at 430am was pretty straight forward. Our bikes were a little slow to arrive but made it none the less.  Hotel time. In a taxi and we were off into Beijing covered in a pleasant thick smog. 7am and we were in our room in time for a nap. Sunrise Hotel Gourou West St – good place, well priced, friendly staff that spoke some English  (way more than our Chinese anyway) and a reasonably quiet area.

Day 1 and we were quite bewildered about where we were, what we were doing there, how cold it was and how on earth to communicate with anyone. Google Translate to the rescue.... most of the time. The city didn’t appear as chaotic as we expected but smog soon enough started to take it’s toll on the body. Apparently we smoked ½ a cigarette a day through breathing in the air.  Our first dinner was random animal parts with spice, sauce and some vegetables. Don’t look too hard, don’t think about it and just eat.

Mid morning sun just glowing through the smog

After getting our bikes pieced together we checked out The Forbidden City. We easily navigated the local streets amongst the random flows of traffic on our bikes, nailed the security check and purchased our tickets. Too easy. Except we had the bought the wrong tickets – we think we got entry to Tianenman Square not Forbidden City. More tickets purchased and we were away with the masses (apparently they allow 80,000 people a day) descending upon The Forbidden City.

Give way to.... arr.... everything.

View over The Forbidden City

Beijing has been most memorable for perusing the Hutongs, wandering the streets and local parks, discovering baozi  (steamed meat bun) and finding a little local friendly restaurant who let us practice our Chinese. Just remember the rules!

Where in the Hutong are we?