Day One

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woke up early morning, about 8am (early for not being employed). Carolee and I realized long ago in our travels that the best way to explore a city is by bike-- less confusing than by bus, less limited than by walking and less underground than the subway. the hostel rented out bikes-- only US$2.50 a day (nice)! It was a bit chaotic the first time out. There isn't much order to the roads. Though they devote full lanes to bicycles (and not just the single path lanes that fit one bike, but full car-sized lanes) they still get crowded. And throw in pedestrians who've wandered off the sidewalk, vendors pushing their foodcarts and other bikers carrying bed mattresses coming down the wrong way and there's mayhem folks.
So the plan the first day was to just wander around and get a feeling for the city, but we ended up checking a bit off the "Let$ Go" laundry list. First stepped into a noodle shop with no menu, no pictures and no english. The only way to order was to frankly, survey the tables of other people and point to the most innocuous dish. We got soup and dumplings for two for about 80 cents total. So then we start with the sights-- Ditan Park where the elderly tai chi and play croquet, the largest tibetan monastery in beijing which housed this monstrous buddha-- 18meters tall-- carved out of a single tree (enough to impress the Guinness folks), and ended the day by visiting the zoo-- usually not an exciting thing, but they had a lot of animals that the bronx zoo doesnt have-- kangaroos, pandas, tigers that were actually out of their dens. It was an impressive zoo, but the lack of groundskeep was apparent. kids were teasing the monkeys by dangling tree vines for them to climb, only to yank them away to make the poor things fall backwards. Some folks threw plastic bottles or pounded on the glass to wake some of the sleeping animals. Hey, who's to change an entire culture? we went to sleep early, about 8, still trying to adjust to the time.

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