Well, We Made It

Day 1: After arriving on Wednesday afternoon, we have had a few adventures. The weather is hotter than I would like it, but after a few more hot days will start to go into fall-like weather.

Our first day, we wandered about the new "neighborhood" and looked for something to eat for dinner, this was at about 4:30 pm local time. We finally settled on a place across the street from the hotel and had a lovely meal. I had spicy tofu, and Bill a mix of organ meats that were stir fried.

                                                                            

                                                          This was Bill's dish

                                                  

This was very good, a little salty, but really tasty

I fell asleep at the conclusion of the meal at the table in the restaurant. Never happened before, will likely never happen again! We returned to the hotel about 7 pm. Fell asleep in a nano second.

Day 2: After 17 hours of sleep, we left our hotel in search of food. We found a place near a Days Inn with an English and Chinese crawl sign. Imagine the Times Square crawl, this one is much shorter and only has a single news story being told over and over. We did not want to struggle with a menu and figured this place would have an English one because of the crawl. Turns out the special dish was dumplings. Hand made to order by 2 women behind a partition. The waiter speaks no English I ordered 2 egg and chive and 2 pork and lotus. Bill said let's hold off and see what we get. Each order turned out to be 10 dumplings. Thank god they were really good.

 Always hydrate fully at every meal

These were excellent dumplings above is the egg and chives and below is the pork and lotus

After eating we felt very refreshed and decided to play tourist at Tiananmen Square which was just a short walk away.

It is very, very large .... larger than Red Square in Moscow! A giant concrete and stone plaza that stretches side to side from Museum to People's Hall and from the Heavenly Gate to Mao's tomb. Then south of Mao's Tomb it goes down to the South Gate.

This is the south gate

This is a view of the Heavenly Gate from the center of the plaza. Note the haze, it is not a poor photo, it is very hazy, not so you are coughing, but it impairs the visuals

We are just about to enter the north end of the square

This is my thinking face

To amuse myself, and many of the Chinese around us, I snuck up on Bill, taking photos as I got closer and closer.

Fairly close.                        

                                                                     Really close

There are many technical issues that I am trying to sort out. One is that the page loads on my end in Kannada, what ever language that is, looks like written Arabic mashed up with script Thai. The page saves slower than I type, so it is challenge to view how the page looks and the last line typed.  

After leaving Tiananmen we wander a bit, hunting looking for a place to rest our feet. We went into several places and were unsure if they were open or were working-girl bars. We found a coffee shop / bar and settled in for a drink and bathroom break. We left near sundown and walked back toward Tianamen. We saw that all traffic at the Heavenly Gate and on either side of the square was stopped, cars, bikes, motor scooters, people. It was changing of the guard. After the honor guard crossed the north street, all barriers were removed and we could freely move about. The square at night was all light up with Mao's portrait in full view from a distance.

We headed back to the hotel for a lay down, and promptly feel asleep for another night without having dinner? WHAT, no dinner, yes, no dinner, but breakfast in the hotel, which was quite tasty.

Day 3

We decided to to the big shopping street nearby, Wangfujing Street. It was a giant mall. Pedestrians were free to walk on the street and there were hundreds of upscale stores and huge high rise malls.  

Bo photo bombed the shot

 We got an email that our HSBC cards had arrived at the prearranged branch. Turns out, on the map, it looked really close, but in reality it was quite far. So we took a cab and we would never have found this place if not for the cab.  

We decided on a Peking Duck dinner and choose Siji Minfu

The crowd when we arrived

It took about an hour, but we finally got in and it was, wait for it, meh. Crispy skin, but not that juicy or flavorful. Guess we will have to try another place, oh, well!

TBC

(To be continued)