« Originally posted on Sunday, August 31, 2003 6:33 AM CDT | HomePage | Originally posted on Wednesday, September 3, 2003 3:37 AM CDT »
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Originally posted on Monday, September 1, 2003 7:24 AM CDT
Originally posted on Monday, September 1, 2003 7:24 AM CDT
Ni Hao!!
We have had quite a busy day today. We started out early with breakfast in the hotel restaurant. They have a breakfast buffet that has both western and chinese dishes. They even had Congee (chinese overcooked rice) on the buffet which we just had to try since that is one thing we know Emilie has had a lot of. And after tasting it, Steve says he now understands why Emilie is not smiling in any of her pictures. :) Congee is definite not something we particularly enjoy. Everything else was very good.
After breakfast we met our guide, Tom in the lobby to start our day of sight seeing. We took a 2 hour bus ride to the northwest of Beijing to climb the Great Wall. It was a beautiful sight. According to the Chinese we are now "heros" for having walked on the Great Wall. I must confess, Steve made it much further up the wall than I did, but we both had a wonderful time. While Steve was climbing the wall I became a celebrity with all the Chinese people who wanted to have their picture taken with myself and Dolores (one of the other ladies in our travel group).
After the Great Wall adventure we made our way back into Beijing where we had lunch at a restaurant / friendship store. After lunch we were able to walk around the store and see all the beautiful items they had for sale. One thing I am having trouble getting used to is their high pressure sales people. They are very adament that you purchase nearly every item in the store. Steve's not doing too bad at the bargaining so far though.
We then went to a pearl store / factory. We received a very nice presentation from one of the girls and then had time to shop for pearl necklaces, earrings, etc. Although the girls were extremely high pressure here (they follow you around the store), we chose not to purchase anything here, as we want to wait till we get to Guangxi Province before we purchase too many items.
From the pearl store we walked over to catch a ferry boat over to the Summer Palace. It was a very nice relaxing ride. The Summer Palace was quite an amazing site. It was very large with extremely ornate paintings and woodworking on all the buildings and walkways. It has the longest covered walkway in China at I think 700+ meters. Our guide Tom has been very good. He has been very good at filling us in on much of the history of China dealing with the sites we have visited so far.
This evening we just returned from a restaurant near our hotel where we got to experience Peking Roasted Duck. We all tried it and liked it, but it isn't something we would care to have too often. The rest of the dishes that Tom ordered were wonderful as usual.
Tomorrow morning we check out of our hotel here in Beijing before we leave to tour the Forbidden City. Tom said we would stop by McDonald's for a quick lunch on the way to the airport to catch our flight to Nanning. The flight to Nanning leaves at 1:10 pm and arrives at 4:20 pm. Tom said we will probably meet Emilie by 7:00 pm or so tomorrow evening. :) We can't wait!!
God Bless,
Steve and Lisa
14:30 Posted in Blog | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: China Adoption