Sorry for the long delay between posts. We've resigned ourselves to the fact that we may not be able to post photos until we arrive in Bangkok, so for now a brief synopsis of China before updating you on our current location. end of Beijing- We last we posted photos we had visited the Great Wall, had our requisite Peking Duck dinner (yummy, but expensive and not very much food.....Pat resorted to gnawing on the head and eating the brain). Afterwards, we headed to the olympic village to take those night pictures. In the morning we visited the Temple of Heaven and watched Beijingers dance, play hacky sack, practice opera, and all manners of other interesting things. We ended the day by boarding our first night train to Shanghai. For this train we were booked on ... read more

Days 3 and 4: On day 3, we had to pack up and leave our new home away from home (FX YanSha) and head to the hotel for our GAP adventure tour. We were sorely disappointed that our new, more expensive hotel did not have free bottled water, nor free breakfast, and only twin beds :( On the up side, it did have a safe so we weren't stuck carrying everything we owned. We explored the area around our hotel and discovered the most insane grocery store with a small army of sample ladies (who needs to buy lunch??). After buying a bunch of different fruits we had never seen, we headed to the Ming Walls Park. The Ming Walls Park is a portion of the original Beijing city walls that now has fantastic gardens surrounding ... read more

Hello from Beijing！We arrived sore and tired after a very long flight。 Our cab driver dropped us off somewhere in the vicinity of our hotel， and with a little help we found our way to a much needed bed。 We decided to tackle the Summer Palace as our first activity since we were warned not to go there on the weekend or we would get a harsh reminder of the population of China。 After a super cheap cab ride， we entered the massive palace。 It was built as a Summer vacation place for the Empress Dowager Cixi in the late 1800's-early 1900 hundreds. The palace grounds were absolutely massive and included pagodas built only for celebrating the Empress‘s birthday. The bronze figures in the pictures are just some of the gifts she received. There were many ... read more