Short trip

We booked this short holiday for two reasons, 1) to climb the Great Wall of China. 2) To celebrate Kai completing all his exams. However, reason two did not happen cos' of the typhoon. Hotel booked, rail tickets bought so we have no choice but to carry on as planned. Kai had his holidays before his last two papers. One of our good friends said that we are such cool parents. Maybe all parents should do that. *WINK*


The big and spacious railway station


The Chinese bullet train


 
Neat, nice and comfortable seats but remember to bring your own headset if you want to watch in-house movie. Little packets of snacks were given out.


Living and dinning rooms


Two bedrooms


Kitchen and of course, the bathroom.

With Kai getting bigger, we now need at least two bedrooms. We booked a very nice 2 bedroom apartment, conveniently located at the Wangfujing . It has everything there from shops to food street to supermarket. We saved lots on transportation. For S$300 per night (worked out to S$150 per room), we thought it was value for money. We will never be able to enjoy the space if we were to book two hotel rooms.



Very, very interesting food street…




What have you identified? Interesting or not?


Then we saw a very different kind of "catching" being played.

The main purpose for this holiday is really this…


Yes, climbing the Great Wall. It was a pity that the city was covered with smog. It would really have been a great view from up there.


It was not your ordinary steps. On certain section, you literally have to go on all fours to climb up. It was an almost vertical climb. Thanks to zumba classes, yours truly made it on twos.


Magnificent. This is indeed a great masterpiece of man. The Great Wall is very long and huge. Almost impossible to cover from end to end. I suggest that if you only have a few hours, climb the Mutianyu section. Less crowded and not destroyed by the huge amount of tourists visiting it.

Guess who we saw…


Wedding couple. Amazing hor…heels, gown and long train. Not easy climbing up those steps. Hats off to them!


Totally exhausted after the climb.

Then off to the Forbidden City the next day. Huge, really HUGE palace.




Do you remember this lane? It was featured in the movie The Last Emperor.


These were the very original pieces. Some parts were falling apart.


That's the map of the whole city


Some places were locked but could still take a peek. My beloved, kaypo family.

My advice to you. Don't go during summer vacation and on weekends. It was so crowded. How crowded…



But still orderly.

What I really enjoyed was taking the pedicab, going round some of the old houses in Beijing. What they call, hutong.




Did you realise a tree growing out from the shop? According to the pedicab guy, the tree is about 300 years old and is not allowed to be chopped off. The owner of the shop could only build his shop around it.




Some of the old houses have been sold and done up nicely. But I think, the old ones have a special character.

All in all, a pretty nice short trip.