China

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So we returned back to London for a day, braving the cold we went to British Musuem to have a look at what the British have stolen in the past such as part of the Syphnxes nose, and the sculptures from the Pathanon. . . . after a lovely early christmas dinner with Steve we were off to Beijing, a place I was a little nervous about . . . . .I have heard so much about China but I just didn't know what to expect. I thought it would be dirty, loud, busy and no english . . . . .

We flew with British Airways for 9 hours, it was so nice to fly with a non budget company for a change, we had lovely food, wonderful flight attendants and 250 films and albulms to watch and listen to . . so with all that I just couldn't sleep . . . .we arrived early the next morning feeling tired and smelly 😊. I always hate trying to work out how to get from an airport to our hotel with out getting ripped off . .we knew we had to get bus no. 3 . . . but none of the buses had numbers on, we doubled checked with a chinese lady who said we needed bus number 3 . . .hmmm . . .we decided to get on the bus third from the left and hope for the best . . . .45 minuters we arrived at the central train station in downtown Beijing. . .and thankfully our hotel was just across the road . . .the first thing we noticed about our room was how wonderfully big it was, then we noticed the free shampoo and toothbrush . . . .a nice change from the Middle East oh and the bed . . it was HARD very very HARD, but that didn't stop us from sleeping the afternoon away and much of the evening . . .after feeling so sick it was nice to sleep. . .11-pm we ate some shop bought noodles and then went back to sleep.

Now the first thing we noticed about about the city was it was cold, not just cold but really really cold so cold that you eyes hurt and your feet go numb. . .we thought we would first walk to the Forbidden City it didn't look far on the map but in the cold it was a long way and while we walked we were joined by some so called English Students . . . .who talked with us for quite a long way until they invited us to their art show that just happened to be open for another hour. . .we left the two students with their con of selling over priced art and entered the Fobbidden City . . .this is the place where the Emperor lived and no common person could enter . . .this place was amazing . . .so large, and very open . . .we spent as much time as we could looking around but it was so cold and we found it hard to apprieciate the beuty of the place . . .we followed the guards out to Tienmen square where they took the flag down, Tienmen square is apparntly the larges square in the world . . .and it did seem pretty big, you had to go through securety to get to it. . . .

Meeting the group we found out there would be only 10 of us and our leader was Bobo a young Chinese girl for the next 20 days.

I enjoyed our few days in Bejing though it was pretty cold . . . the city was so big, I thought it would be all be old windy roads full of bikes, but no it looked like it had just been built, there were people cleaning everywhere, they seemed to be cleaning the dirt off the road, the leaves of the grass . .and of course the spit of the ground, the Chinese spit everywhere . .and the grosses thing they do is blow their nose with out tissue straight onto the ground! . . .yuck . . . . also they seemed to enjoy pushing and have no idea of personal space. . . but you get use to that. I do love Chinese food, after the Middle East I seem to have put on any weight I lost . . .we had great Peking Duck, sweet and sour chicken, kung po chicken and lots of garlic vegatables . . .and the food is cheap we can both eat a great meal for five pounds. So what else did we see in Beijing, we went to the Summer Palace which was beutiful there was a massive lake in the park which was completely frozen, there was also a lot of steps and of course we climbed to the top of them.
We also went to the Olympic Area to see where the 2008 Olympics took place, I really liked the Birds Nest Stadium, named because it looks like one. . . . .there were a lot of Chinese tourists here which surprised me, though we’ve barely seen any westerners. Also a lot of kite sellers strangly.

Next it's onto the Wall . . .the GREAT WALL!

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Comments

[NYCkid]

Beijing
You should visit Beijing in the summer. It wouldbe cleaner and much warmer.