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Well as you may have guessed I was unable to get to
the business center to do email before it closed last night. You
can blame my mother and grandmother for being to slow with shopping that
evening. Anyway, the past two days in retrospect. Well I
slept in till 8AM, sad that I consider that sleeping in right now, can't
wait to be lazy again. Then we hopped on the bus and drove to
Tienammin Square (however you spell it) Nothing really interesting
there except the history of the place. It was livened a bit by me
getting to pose with a whole bunch of Japanese school girls. They
were dressed like school kids in anime cartoons, in other words they
really wear those uniforms. You can tell its not a catholic school
uniform cause some of the girls have really short skirts. Arthur,
one of the guys on the tour and about 80 was following them around.
We then entered the Forbidden city. Nice but, also a bit disappointing,
mostly empty rooms and big open squares and lots of tourists. Once
again only impressive if you could picture the history of the place and
imagine yourself back in time. Which was kind of hard to do when
there is even a Starbuck's inside the walls of the Forbidden city.
After that we drove a little ways out into the suburbs to visit
the Summer Palace. Or actually a reconstruction on the same sight
with some original. It was burned down and looted in 1860 by the
British and French in the second opium war, and again later in 1880's by
8 different nations. But it was nice, if boring. I guess you
can tell that most of the sites were a small let down, that and I was
getting tired of being herded around like cattle on the tour. I
have seen so much that it is blurring. No time to stop and
appreciate what you are seeing.
We skipped the acrobatic show and went shopping downtown instead.
Not many stories there except the presents you will see and the fact I
got my first non Chinese food in 9 days, a pizza from pizza hut.
Today we went and visited the great frikin wall. It looks
pretty in the pictures, but it is a pain in the ass to walk. It is
straight up and down. At least I will have good leg muscles from
it. It is also very touristy every where. Way to many
tourists.
Then we went and visited a Ming Dynasty emperors tomb. Or
at least what is left of it. Not much actually since it was looted
and desecrated during the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960's.
So basically it is a bunch of empty rooms underground with the
occasional replica. Kind of a gyp. not that I was paying
attention.
We then went and every one else had Peking duck, I didn't like
it. Tired of frickin Chinese food.
So any way I have tons of pictures from Beijing and also the entire
trip, you will see them I am sure. I also have a video of all of
us on the tour from just the Beijing days. So you can see us move
and talk and stuff. You don't have to watch it if you don't want.
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