Up and At 'em

We went to the breakfast buffet this morning. It was very good. We're just going to have to get pictures tomorrow. It's divided into two parts: western style on one end, and Asian on the other. There was also an omelet bar. The Asian side had some interesting breakfast items - like octopus salad!


After breakfast we formulated a plan for tackling the day. We signed up for a tour tomorrow that the hotel offers. It goes to a less popular and less restored section of the Great Wall called the Mu Tian Yu section. Get this: transportation 70 Km away with a guide for two hours - about $29 us dollars.


Getting around town is quite easy. The front desk will write down where you want to go on one of their business cards. We just show that to a taxi driver and away we go, and taxis are everywhere.


Our first stop was the Olympic Stadium, aka the "Birds Nest". It's still under construction so it's gated off but we got close enough to get some pictures.


We then went to a place called Bai Hei Park just on the west side of the Forbidden City. A good comparison would be central park in New York. It's a very large, well landscaped park and lake right in the middle of downtown. The White Pagoda in the background is a Buddhist temple.
Of course, the people watching was primo. There was an area where about 30 people were waltzing and another where an older couple writing calligraphy on the ground with watered brushes.





We then went to another park across the street called Jingshan Park. It had a temple on top of a hill which overlooked the Forbidden City.

Unfortunately, the haze was too bad to get a great picture of the Forbidden City, as you can tell by this picture

It's 4:00 pm here and we don't know what we may do tonight. We're pretty much making it up as we go. We'll check in again tomorrow.

Matt and Jen