Visit to Beijing - part I

Our trip to Beijing was very different from our trip to Hong Kong. The first difference that we experienced as we arrived in Beijing was that it was cold! Somewhere around 10 C or even less in the morning and evening. This was a big change from the perfect temperature range (23 to 29 C) that we've experienced in Hong Kong.

Another big difference was to see how big and spread out Beijing is. It is huge!!! Streets are super-wide, buildings are spread out, and the subway has at least different 10 lines, if not more. That is what happens when a city has over 16 million residents.

The first sites we went to see were the Olympic Stadium (Bird's Nest) and the Acquatic Centre (The Cube). Absolutely amazing structures! All olympic buildings in this area look like they are really close to each other, but they just look that way because they are so big. It took a while to walk from one building to another. The inside of the Olympic Stadium is huge, and both Carla and I could feel the positive energy in the stadium. Almost as if all the goodwill from the games had accumulated and stayed there.
We also saw the Forbidden City. Pack your good shoes because this place is BIG. You walk and walk, and then you walk some more! The emperors sure knew how to build walls and palaces. The place looked pretty spacious inside. I actually used Google Maps satellite view to check out the Forbidden City before going there, but not even that had prepared me for how grandiose this place is. Something to see, for sure.
Our first three days in Beijing were so cloudy and smoggy, that the visibility could not have been more than 500-1000 meters. We also found the air really polluted, since whenever we blew our noses, the napkins would be full of black stuff. I don't think that was supposed to happen. :-)

The Tienanmen Square in front of the Forbidden City was Chinese-big. Here is my gradation of big; there is big, then there is USA-big, and then there is Chinese-big (which is the biggest big in my dictionary). :-) The Square was surrounded on four sides by the Forbidden City, Museum of Peoples' something, Mao Zedong's Mausoleum, and Hall of the Peoples' something.
On our last day we caught a bus to the Great Wall of China, and according to my definition of big, it was Chinese-big. The wall went on for miles and miles. The surprising thing was that you could see people walking the wall all the way. The wall was pretty crowded so we kept bumping into people all over the place. Then, we took a wrong turn (I know, you're probably thinking how can you take a wrong turn on a wall) and ended our walk of the wall prematurely. Oh well, this is why I take pictures early, because it was not easy to get back on the wall.
More to come...