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Published: July 31st 2012
We arrived in Beijing China on the worst possible weekend that you could schedule a trip. When we walked out of the airport I was very disappointment to see the (lack of) skyline. It was foggy and overcast, which I thought was smog. I did make the comment that the skyline looked like Shenyang. After arriving at the hotel we went out walking to find the US Embassy, we found every country but the US, I know it was around that area but could not find. Later that evening a friend and coworker of my husbands arrived and he took us out to enjoy some Western cursine and music, had a great time. He is West Africa and speaks four languages ( French, English, Chinese, African). Next day we had scheduled to travel to the Great Wall with the coworker and a friend of his that was from Beijing. Our trip started out by getting lost, which turned out to be a lot of fun, because we got to see the small villages and people. Still no skyline. My hopes was to take some great photos, did not happen. Cloudy, overcast.
We arrived at the wall and it started to
rain a little, no worries we say, I want melt. We start walking, I knew that my best bet was to get in the chairlift to the top which we did, view would have been great but rain and clouds prevented any great shots. Get to the level that the chiarlift goes to and see that we have to walk the rest of the way to the top. OMG!!!!!!!! Some of the stone steps were over 2 feet high and about 12 inches wide going straight up. I will be the first to stay I was in no condition to handle what I saw in front of me, but I came this far around the world I have to do it. Just imagine this, before I could get off the small small portion of the wall that I was on, I was crawling on all fours to get back to the chairlift and it was raining pretty hard by that time. BUT I MADE IT>> YA HOOOOOOOOOOO!!
On the way out you have to pass row after row of street vendors selling their wears. All shouting, lady lady and shoving stuff at you, I know I said no in
Chinese a 100 times. They kept saying 1 US dollar for everything. I know it is not usual for the people of China to deal in US dollars. So I told my husband I will give them a dollar to make the purchase. Needless to say they then wanted RMB's and a lot of them. NO NO NO. We have been told to bargain, well most of them think all Americans are rich so they do not come down off their price or try to sell you something else saying it is better. NO NO NO.
There was one thing that they all were selling and that was a tee shirt with Obama wearing the China miltary uniform and the translation in English was
Serves the Republic Peoples of China. We had to get it, to show what the Chinese think of the current US President. Member of the Communist Party. I will post that picture of the shirt on another blog.
To get on with the weekend, by the time we arrived back at the hotel the rain was coming down in buckets. We had scheduled a night on the town but we all agreed we should
not go due to the rain. That was the night of the worst storm in the history of Beijing in 61 years. Flooding was everywhere, by the end of it there was 77 people dead. Very sad. The streets and lakes could not hold the water, cars floating, roofs flying thru the air.
Next day when we were departing for the airport I looked out and to my delight I saw the skyline, it was the most precise thing that I have saw in several months. Flight home was postponed for 5 hours then we had to be bussed to the tarmat and then climb stairs up to the plane, then set in plane for another hour.
To complete the weekend, we arrived in Shenyang and it has been pouring rain for hours so our driver had to detour around the flooding streets to get us to the condo. Lovely just lovely!!!!!!!!!
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Portion of the wall
John
non-member comment
Thanks
Thank you Ester!