We arrived in Beijing yesterday afternoon and I was exhausted after the 14 hour flight. On the drive back to the hotel we got to see some of the city from the bus and I was surprised because Beijing is a very developed city and it is lot more similar to the US than I thought it would be. After arriving at the hotel, we went to exchange money and the group I was with ended up having to go to three different banks and wait about an hour but we finally did it. After that we had our welcome dinner and we got to try authentic Chinese food complete with Peking duck.
Today was our first full day in Beijing. We started off the day with breakfast at the hotel and it was surprising because the food they have for breakfast here is very different than traditional American breakfast. They had more savory dishes we would usually have for lunch or dinner, like dumplings, fried rice, and noodles. After that we left for the Great Wall. When we arrived, we decided as a group that we wanted to hike up to the Great Wall rather than take the lift. That was a mistake because we ended up walking up more than 70 flights of stairs and it felt like I almost died. The hike up was worth it though because the view was breath taking. I am in awe of the people who built the Great Wall because I could barely make it up all those stairs, so I can’t imagine carrying the bricks all the way up there to build it. Looking out over the lush green valley was incredible and you could see the Great Wall continue for miles. We also walked along the wall and went in the guard towers. After we had finished on the Wall, we got to take the slide all the way down the hillside. We sat in little toboggans and steered them down the metal slide as we snaked down the hill. We the toboggans actually went pretty fast and it was so much fun!
After the Great Wall we had lunch at a nearby restaurant and the food was amazing! They had all sorts of different Chinese dishes. I’m not really sure what they were, but they tasted really good. We had chicken and beef dishes, eggplant, fish, and more. It felt like there was an endless amount of food.
Next, we made our way to the Summer Palace and we learned about the Dragon Lady, a previous ruler of the Chinese empire, who spent most of her time there. The Summer Palace is huge and spans hundreds of acres. It was really cool to see original Chinese architecture which was so intricate and beautiful. It was funny because some of the Chinese tourists there kept taking videos of our group and asked to take pictures with us because they haven’t seen many white people before. Finally, for dinner we got hot pot and it was my first time going so it was another really cool experience and I’m glad we are getting to try a bunch of different types of cuisine.
