Wednesday Highlights

The internet wasn't working in our room last night, but things seem to be back on track now. :)

First things first - a shout out to the birthday boy. Happy Birthday, Josh! Welcome to the late twenties. Know that I was thinking of you as I was sweating through my shirt...

Yesterday was a long, hot, exhausting day. But also a great day. Here are some highlights:

• We started by taking the subway to Tiananmen Square. It was pretty crowded there, and they had some neat Olympic-related stuff set up there.
• After that, we headed across the street to The Forbidden City. It's one enormous place! We got the audio guide tours so we could learn a little more about what we were seeing. Unfortunately, a lot of it went in one ear and out the other. Except for one story about a concubine. She was not the emperor's favorite, but then one day he heard her reciting a poem about a maple leaf, and he apparently found that to be pretty sexy. Maybe I will try that in the US? We spent a few hours in the Forbidden City, exploring the Temple of the Greatest Most High Very Glorious Harmony, or something like that. Ok, so that's not quite the name of it, but most of the temples have names a little like that.
• Then we went across the street to Jing Shan park, and climbed up to the top where there is a Buddhist Temple with quite a view. Well, it would be a better view were it not so smoggy here - but still a good view. 
• We walked through that park to another one - Bei Hai park, and through it. We are loving the parks here. We decided to find a place for dinner, so we were walking around, and as we turned a corner, it appeared as if out of nowhere... a Starbucks! Yay! That may have been the best caramel frappuccino ever. While most things are much cheaper here (a bottle of water is about 30-40 cents), Starbucks is more expensive. I think my drink was five-something. But worth every penny!
• We found a great area along a lake with tons of restaurants. We ate at one called Silk Road South. I think what I had was the Chinese equivalent to fried chicken. The spring rolls were very yummy. The menu, which rivaled that of the Cheesecake Factory in size, had photos of some of the things, and English. There was one thing we couldn't figure out, though, even in English... lots of things were served with "Wikipedia." Hmm. Any ideas?
• We were pretty beat after dinner, so we headed back to the hostel, where our air conditioning awaited. We both woke up at 5am today, and we're not sure why.

We're planning to head to The Great Wall today.

Man-Style

It's hot here. And it didn't take us long to realize that this is what men do to try to stay cool. We saw lots of this yesterday as we were out and about:

We had a nice, loooong night of sleep and are going to head to the Forbidden City today. 

The on/off on/off on/off method of showering

Let me tell you about our shower. This is a photo of the bathroom. I'm pretty sure the shower was an afterthought. It is a tiny bathroom, with toilet and sink. Then that thing you see on the top left of the photo is the hot water heater. There is a handheld shower. 

The thing it, there really isn't a place to stand other than kind of in front of the toilet. We have adopted this method of showering:

On: Wet hair and body

Off: Lather and shampoo

On: Rinse 

Off: Condition

On: Rinse

Off.

It takes a little getting used to, but ultimately, I am thankful that we even have one as part of our room... and of course, for the hot water!

How to Post a Comment

More than one of you have asked how to post a comment... and I realized it was set so only registered users could leave comments. But I changed that.

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We look forward to hearing from you!

Looks Like We Made It!

(Think Barry Manilow. Or Christopher singing Barry Manilow...)

Yes, we have arrived! And it really does seem more like 1:30 pm than 1:30 am, so that's a good thing. Thought I'd share a few photos from our journey:

We arrived in Seoul about 4:30 am (3:30 pm Eastern). This was my unhappy face when we found that Caribou Coffee didn't open till 6. Luckily, the airport was basically deserted, so we just sacked out on some seats there and napped. Also, I think I paid 5,300-somethings for some coffee. I have no idea how much that is in dollars.

Much happier a couple hours later with the coffee and an asiago cheese bagel from Au Bon Pain. Yes, we really did leave the US...

This was one of the many Olympics-related things that greeted us at the airport in Beijing. There were volunteers everywhere, information centers set up, and tons of signage. Also, we rode the train to baggage with the cycling team from Great Britain and some canoers from Australia. It's fun to see people from everywhere, all in one place!

P.S. Yes, we have a room, and it is private with a bathroom. It has wireless and air conditioning. And not much else. More on that later. :)

Flights and Food

The flight from LA to Seoul wasn't bad at all. I spent the first couple of hours watching Prince Caspian (which Josh will be happy to know is darker than The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe), and at least six hours sleeping. Plus they served two meals. You could have western style or Korean and I went for Korean of course. The first meal was steamed sweet pumpkin (served cold), fresh fruit, some seafood-tasting broth soup and bi-bim-bab (see above). Bi-bim-bab is steamed rice, assorted vegetables and kimchi that you mix together with sesame oil and korean chili paste. I enjoyed it. For breakfast they offered spicy octopus with steamed rice, yogurt and fresh fruit. On our flight from Korea to Beijing which was only 1 1/2 hour they offered another meal. Some beef dish with rice, fresh fruit and orange juice. All the meals were served with tea or coffee and real silverware!

The only good thing about packing

...is that it means vacation is really soon.