Day #85: Comparing Olympic Parks

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I spent most of today trying to acclimatise to the heat and humidity in Beijing. The temperature is in the mid-thirties and the air is thick and heavy. I spent the morning at the Olympic Park, mostly because it was an easy excursion - very simple to get to, and easy to wander around. By lunchtime I was exhausted.

The Olympic Park was not that interesting, aside from having the opportunity to compare it to London's, and (unsurprisingly) it was very similar, though Beijing has the more interesting stadium (the Bird's Nest) but doesn't make such good use of green spaces as London. I was surprised by how busy it was - it is still popular as a tourist destination with Chinese tourists (I doubt the London site is visited by many English tourists), and the food court was bustling. There were many hawkers offering to take photographs of tourists with the Bird's Nest in the background, and I remembered that many Mongolian families who had visited Beijing proudly displayed such photographs in their gers.

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