Monday, July 14 We had a great Chinese breakfast at our B&B. We took took care of some travel business and found a contact to buy our plane tickets from Xi’an to Guilin through our B&B host and also bought our train tickets to Datong. We started our Beijing sightseeing for the day by climbing to the tops of both the Drum tower and the Bell tower. It rained all day but we still managed to see a ton of sights and maintain a steady level of dampness along the way. We did some major Hutong exploration, found some sweet hipster hangouts, and bought more tees for Josh. We then went to check out Confucius Temple and the Yonghe Gong, a Tibetan Lama Temple. Here, Josh took a quick snoozer on Jeannette’s shoulder while a few girls took photos of him (Jeannette saw the lens on zoom) on the sly while he kept still. He has had quite a few girls ask to have their pictures taken with him while he’s been here, because they say he is “handsome”, “hot”, “cute” or “David Beckham”. By the time we finished the Yonghe Gong it was about 4pm and we were famished. And wet. We cabbed it to the 798 Art District, a repurposed electronics factories now used for art galleries, exhibitions, studios, cafes, etc. We checked out Josh’s new favorite warehouse space and grabbed a bite to eat at one of the cafes. We then began a misadventure trekking through the rain for about 2 hours before finally cabbing it the last bit of the way to check out the Olympic sites, specifically the National Aquatic Center and the National Stadium (aka the Nest). The buildings were awesome to view lit up at night and we did get to see so many different parts of “real” Beijing on the way. At this point it began to rain harder so we grabbed a cab and hightailed it back to our fabulous B&B to dry out and catch some early shut eye before climbing the Great Wall tomorrow.
P.S. We see a fair showing of Celtics gear. Being worn and being sold… NBA Champions…
We say go Celtics to the kids sporting a jersey whenever possible and they seem to enjoy it.
Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device
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i may sound like an old fart saying this but i think it’s amazing that you guys are blogging from your blackberry.
i enjoy reading updates of your adventures in China…it’s been ages since i’ve travelled like that. enjoy!!