Posting to the blog is getting more difficult as I can only update through remote access to my office computer. We met the rest of the group, eight others and our national tour guide (Jim) and local tour guide for Beijing (Robert). I can't say enough good things about Jim. He watches over us like a mother hen, as if his whole existence depended on our pleasure. Our visit to Beijing was brisk, with little(no, no) downtime. Starting at Tianamin Square, on to the forbidden City and Imperial Palace, lunch in a local house in a "Houtang" or old neighborhood where locals all share common bathrooms and wash houses, a visit to the Olympic Site to see the Birds Nest, and Water Cube, and finishing the day with an unexpected performance of the Art of Kung Fu. It was a full day and we were all exhausted. I really felt sorry for the rest of the group that jsut arrived the nite before.
We were at it again with breakfast at 6:30am the next day for our ride to the Great Wall. Donna and I climbed the steeper side up to the first watch tower. the others in our group continued the climb to the very end, another two watch towers up a very steep incline. Donna and I went back and discovered the Great Wall Museum that was both interesting and enjoyable. the museum is fairly new and our tour guide was not even aware of its existence.
After lunch we were held captive for a tour of a local jade factory. Prices were exhorbitant for mass produced articles, none of whcih was appealing. And considering that a pair of earrings cost upwards of $2,000 US, the decision to pass on purchases was an easy one.
In the afternoon we visited the Summer Palace, taking a Dragon Boat ride across the man-made lake to the Imperial Buildings. We spent 90-minutes there but would have been just as happy (happier) with a 30-minute tour. It's all beginning to look alike.
We had our special Peking Duck dinner in an okay restaurant. Peking Duck restaurants are everywhere, and the one selected by China Spree was adequate, but not great. Our group is great and everyone we have all become very friendly. Other than two sisters (each pharmacists), who are young, the rest are couples near our own age.
Today we checked out of the hotel, said goodby to our luggage, and went to visit the Temple of the Good Harvest, a magnificent pagoda style building, enormous in scale, built in 1530 during the Ming Dynasty by the Emperor twice each year to pray for a good harvest. In the park outside the Temple there are hundreds of locals practicing various forms of excercise including structured movements while balancing and throwing a ball caught and held on a paddle. I have dozens of great photos that I will try to download to Flicker, os please check out my flicker site with a link shown in an earlier posting.
Today we flew to Xian and visited the nite markket in the Muslim area inside the City Walls. An incredible electric lite setting of vendors peddling everything imaginable in an outside market so crowded with onlookers that it was difficult to walk through. We bought a few electric lite spinning tops for our grandchildren, bargining down from an asking price of 20 yuan to 15. As we left the market we found other vendors selling the tops for 10. And that was their asking price, which could have probably been bargained down even further. But what the hell, we're talking about the difference of about $1. But half the fun is in the bargaining. We're such easy marks that there is no way we'll ever beat the vendors to the price a local would pay.
Our hotel is new, spacious and extremely nice. Each room has a separate sitting room with included internet access (although I still cna't get to my blog without going through the remote link thru my office. It's now after 11pm and we have another early day tomorrow. I'll try to post agina tomorrow and upload some of the pictures to Flicker. Goodnite.
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