Adventures in Beijing

After returning from our tour of the wall we had some actual free time for the first time in our trip (not counting being on the boat for long stretches) and so a bunch of us decided it would be a good idea to go find something to eat. A lot of people would up getting McDonalds since there was one near our hotel, but I'm rarely in the mood for a quarter pounder with cheese, even when I'm at home, so I decided to try my luck and buy whatever other food I could find, first I stopped at a little bakery, and bought a jar of cookies, which weren't very good, then I wandered down the street a little farther and found a place that was selling little pieces of food on sticks which were being boiled in some sort of sauce. I picked up a few random ones, and I have no idea what I ate, all I can say about the experience is that the thing that looked like a few slices of hot dog, definitely was not. After that I stopped into the Jazz club right next to our hotel, The Hot Cat, because there was a live band playing. I have to say hearing a Chinese cover of Bob Marley's No Woman No Cry was a unique experience.

The next morning our whole group set off to the forbidden city. The sheer size of the place is amazing, it really is the size of a small city, and I don't really understand how it could have been built to accommodate one person, it's mind boggling.

Photos and Sketch at the Forbidden City

After seeing the Garden's behind the City I set off with Rob, Kat, and Sean towards Tienanmen square, On the way there we met a woman who had art on display at a gallery across the street from us so we followed her and had a look around,the artwork in that gallery was amazing, and after shopping there for a while I left with two ink paintings.

Not the Paintings I bought, definitely the best in the gallery

After that we stopped for lunch before heading into the square, it was pretty funny to try and order a full meal without someone to translate.

Tienanmen square, while pretty cool, is basically just a big square with a few monuments in it, and some cool buildings around it. It didn't really have the grandness of the forbidden city, but it was definitely cool to walk through.

Sketch and Photos from Tienanmen square

After that we headed into Pearl Market, the Largest marketplace in Beijing. It was very fun to wander around and be able to haggle the prices on pretty much anything.

Sketch and Photos from Pearl Market

The next day was our last in China, but our cabs to the airport didn't leave until almost noon, so after a quick Chinese-style breakfast burrito thing Eric, Abbie, and Myself decided to go take a look at the Golden Lama Temple which was very beautiful, and a great way to end our trip, in my opinion.

Outside of the Temple

Petting the turtle for good luck

Wuhan to Beijing, and The Great Wild Wall

Eventually Thursday morning rolled around and it was time to end out river tour, which luckily ended the hour loop of Kenny G. songs that had been playing since we got on the boat. We hopped a bus from the docks back into Wuhan, but we still had a few hours to kill before our flight to Beijing that night, so we spent our time wandering around the old European portion of the city

A statue In Wuhan

and saying goodbye to our awesome tour guide Linda who had been with us since our first full day in Wuhan. And Thanking Steve Wilmarth again for finding us a new hotel after the communist party commandeered our rooms in Beijing.

Saying Goodbye to Linda and Steve

The part of Wuhan we were in mostly consisted of very high-end stores, there had to have been like five or so Nike outlets and a whole bunch of Addidas stores and all kinds of fancy clothing stores and such where ever thing was just as expensive as it would be back home, so I mostly spent my time here wandering around not buying anything while trying to avoid the sketchy hawkers trying to sell fake Rolexes and stolen shirts.

That night we caught a flight to Beijing and after a frantic hop on the 24 hour train that only runs until 11 pm and a crazy cab ride we got to our hotel, a small little place tucked away in a hutong, a kind of courtyard neighborhood right by the Golden Lama Temple, one of the largest Buddhist temples in the city.

We got up early the next morning and got on a bus where we met William Lindesay, A man who was One of the first people to walk the entire length of the Great Wall of China. And that afternoon he was going to show us A part of the wall not many people get to see.

William Giving us a brief lesson about the wall

After a long, steep, somewhat icy hike a mountain we reached what William calls the Wild Wall, an unrestored section of the wall that is extremely beautiful to behold.

Pictures and Sketch from the wall

It was still fairly cool up in the mountains of Inner Mongolia so After admiring the beauty of the wall the hike back down to William's Cabin was very icy and I managed to fall quite a lot, but the tough journey back was well rewarded with plates on plates of delicious dumplings and tea.

Some Geese I saw near William's Cabin. They were not happy

Hubei Province by Boat

Monday night was out last night in Wuhan City, and we ended it with sparklers and flying wish lanterns on the shore of the Yangtze river

A Wish Lantern over the River

The next morning, after After Breakfast

Alex attempting to chug one last yogurt drink

and some crazy Wuhan traffic jams it was time to say goodbye to our new friends and we were off on the road to the Three Gorges Dams, but before disembarking on our cruise up the river we stopped at a restaurant carved into the side of a cliff.

Next on the itinerary was a hike up the same cliff and through some woods to a really cool series of caves up at the top, though poorly lit in most parts the rock formations inside the caves looked awesome

A Buddha Statue that was in the caves

after hiking back down, we saw some sturgeons,

My rendition of a sturgeon

bridge from beneath

and took a mini boat tour of the area we were in which was pretty cool. To get down to see the sturgeons and get on the little tour boats we had to walk down the first of many seriously impressive flights of stairs on the trip. It was quite an effort to get back to the top, to say the least.

Finally it was time to board the cruise ship where we'd be staying for the few nights. Unknowingly our boat passed through the Three Gorges Dam sometime between 3am and 4am that first night so we didn't get to see them at all, but despite that between the card games and scrabble and music on deck in the evenings and our excursions during the day the cruise was overall very pleasant.

Some sketches I made while on the boat

Our first outing while on the boat was a cruise up one of the tributaries in small wooden boats called Pea Pod boats, which was cool, the guide on the boat even sang us a traditional Tu Jia (The name of the people who live in the area) song. Along the way we also saw some monkeys on the shore and a crevice high up in a cliff with some coffins hanging in it.

Hanging coffins

The second trip off the boat was to a place called the white emperor city, which happened to contain another epic flight of stairs, the temple at the top was really cool, and totally worth the climb, with all it's awesome statuary, great view, and even a few stair climbing donkeys.