Beijing Adventures

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This past weekend we had a three- day weekend courtesy of our teacher to allow us to travel to places that were far away from Hangzhou. All 10 of us American students decided to travel up to Beijing for the weekend. It was amazing and I wish we had more time there because there is so much more that I would like to see there!

We left Thursday night on the Z Train which is 16 hours long and is overnight. We boarded the train at 6:30 on Thursday and got into Beijing the next day at 10:30 am. The train was not that bad, we bought economy tickets which meant that we didnt get beds in a sleeper car and had to sleep in out seets. It really wasn't that bad and I got the most sleep of everyone with 7 hours. Some people went to extreme measures trying to sleep including laying under the seats on the ground and sitting on the floor and resting their head on the seats. Not everyone had a seat though. You could purchase tickets that we standing room only and so there were a decent amount of people standing in the aisles. We had a table between the two sets of seats so we brought along our cards and were all playing card games, which the Chinese people thought was hilarious and they kept standing by us so that they could watch.

We got into Beijing on Friday morning and first headed to our hotel. Our hotel was awesome it was a small little hotel but it was very nice and the people there spoke English! It was also really close to the Forbidden City so after cleaning up and getting ready for the day, we walked over there to experience that. The Forbidden City was really cool and all the buildings were beautifully decorated. We did a lot of walking around the Forbidden City until everyone was too tired to move and then we headed back to the hotel to rest before dinner. The rest of the night consisted of walking around that area and experiencing Beijing.

On Saturday, we got up at 4:30 am in order to head to the Great Wall. Our tour started at 6 but when you have a lot of people that need to shower and get ready, you have to be up early! Climbing the Great Wall was one of the coolest things that I have ever done in my life. Our tour drove us 3 hours outside of Beijing to the Jinshanling section of the Great Wall. This section is the most preserved part of the Great Wall and has not been restored or renovated in any way. Many sections had rocks that were crumbling and were very difficult to climb, but luckily we had some really nice ladies that were there to help us, of course they just wanted to sell us stuff afterwards but they were so helpful during the entire time that we felt that we owed them something. The Great Wall was absolutely gorgeous though, anywhere you looked was beautiful mountains and wall and it was the coolest thing ever! My legs are still sore from all the climbing, especially when there were sections of the wall that we were told were 70 degrees upwards, and sometimes it seemed even steeper than that! We all slept very peacefully that night! For dinner, we went out to the famous Night Market. I stuck to normal chicken and fruits while I was there but some of the people went and tried some of the craziest things they could find, including: spiders, crickets, dog, cat, sheep testicles, ostrich, and many more things. It was completely disgusting.

On Sunday, we had our train back at 4:30. We took the Beijing Bullet Train back, so that trip was only about 7 hours long. That train was very nice and luxurious though. I would definitely suggest that everyone tries that at least once in China. But in the morning, we went to the Summer Palace. The Summer Palace was very similar to the Forbidden City but it was still different and very cool. After the Summer Palace, we headed out to Olympic Park for about half an hour before we headed to the train station. Olympic Park is where the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics were held. We got to see the birds nest and the Water Cube. If we had had more time it would have been cool to go inside those buildings but we had to head out to the train station. We got back to the dorms a little before midnight and were exhausted and went straight to bed but it was well worth it.

I can't wait to hopefully come back to China one day and finish all the other things that I wanted to do in Beijing. It's definitely an experience that I'm never gonna forget.

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