Beijing Day 1

Hi, families. Beijing was awesome, and we got to go to The Forbidden City, Tieneman Square (we even got to see Mao on display in his crystal casket - but we were kind of put out by it), The Temple of Heaven, and The Summer Palace. Wow, some of those places are a lot larger than we thought and took a lot longer to wander through them.

Beijing is very busy getting ready for the Olympics next year, and we saw a lot of construction on new buildings and roads. We passed on eating Peking Duck and were amazed at all the bicycles and the crazy taxi drivers. One taxi driver was yelling at us in Mandarin the whole time he was driving us back to the hotel (no English on his part, no Mandarin on ours other than hello and thank you), grinding gears and narrowly avoiding other cars at the same time. After a few "I don't know's" from us (the rest of our sum knowledge of Mandarin) we just let him rant and rave at us while praying we would make it to our destination. We burrowed deep in a shoulder bag we were so upset by the situation. Miracle of miracles, we made it back to the hotel in one piece.

By the way, we have to break up our note to you on our activities since we can't attach too many pictures at one time.

The first day in Beijing we took a tour to the Ming Tombs and the Great Wall of China at Badaling. Wow! The Ming Tombs are thought to house 13 of the 16 Ming Emperors. One of the tombs has been opened, but they didn't allow us to go through it. The statues on the way to the main buildings were huge. We were perched on one of the large carved stone slabs. The buildings on this property were just a prelude of things to come on this trip, but they never ceased to amaze us.

After a great Chinese lunch, we were on our way to the Great Wall. There are several sections of the wall close to Beijing, but we went to the one that is most popular and has been reconstructed. The construction of the wall is incredible. It is so hard to imagine this thing being built - so much material would have had to have been hauled to the mountain side. The wall is a lot steeper than we thought it would be, too. We had to huff and puff our way up parts of it. She-who-must-not-be-named and Little B had to hold on tight to us in order for us to have our picture made on the Wall because it was so windy and cold. We hated to leave here. We could have walked for hours!

This was a really busy day for us, and we arrived back at the hotel tired and hungry, but we took some time to play with the elephants in the hotel lobby.

We are going to sign off now and will write again tomorrow about the rest of our adventures.

Love,
Kermit the Hermit Crab and Funky Monkey