Dec. 6th- Day Two in Beijing

On Saturday we woke up 7:30 and got dressed quickly. The hostel provides a complimentary breakfast of a fried egg with toast and fruit. It was delicious. Bill has tried to stay loyal to just Chinese food since we arrived but I refused to eat Chinese rice porridge for breakfast so I dragged him to the free breakfast. Again, it was delicious. After we ate we took a shortcut through back alleys to the bus station that would take us to another station which went to the Great Wall. We changed buses at the station and then rode the next bus for an hour. By the time we reached the Great Wall the bus was packed and we pretty much had to crawl over people to get to the exit. Once outside the bus we bought a ticket and started to climb the wall. This section is more touristy than the section we visited during the Silk Road trip. We began with the left side of the wall but there were more people on that side than the other one so we switched sides. We quickly found out why everyone preferred the left side because the right side was MUCH steeper. The whole wall was lined with hand rails. One set of stairs we climbed were the worst I have yet encountered in China. They barely fit my whole foot and were from my foot to right above my knee. Needless to say we took many breaks on the way up.

Once we reached the top we sat down on the stairs and pulled out our Ritz and Doritos for a snack and photo op. I know, we're nerds. We walked along the wall for about two and a half hours and then headed back down when we reached a dead end. We got back on the bus that returned to the city which took 2 hours because of traffic. Once we were off the bus we found the nearest subway station and went to the Lama Temple. It was originally built in the 1600s and it had new construction done during the 1700s. It was pretty similar to the temples we saw in Tibet but it still couldn't touch the atmosphere that we felt there. It did have a Buddha, I can't remember how tall it was, made from the trunk of a sandlewood tree. It was huge and I couldn't believe they carved it from one tree. After the Lama Temple we hopped back on the subway to go to the Olympic Park. When we got on the line that travels the whole Olympic Park we decided to get off at the last stop and make  our way back. When we got off at our stop we immediately noticed how eerie the area was. I can't even imagine how busy it was during the Olympics but it was completely empty. Now it's just this huge empty concrete space. We walked for a good 20 minutes before we saw more people gathered around the Olympic Stadiums. There was some kind of event going on at the National Indoor Stadium but we didn't think just standing there would get us in this time. The Water Cube was awesome. They had it blocked off but the color of it was so cool. The Bird's Nest was also really neat. I took pictures of us in front of them and if you want to see the air quality in Beijing just look at those pictures. There are particles in the air in every picture that I used a flash for at night. Scary.

While we walked through the park Bill had mentioned that he wouldn't mind eating Pizza Hut so we walked out of the park and tried to find the subway so we could go to a street that was more centrally located. We asked several people where it was and every one of them pointed in the same direction but we never found it. We walked around for about 30 minutes looking for it when we came across a Dominos. We decided it was close enough to Pizza Hut so we ate there for dinner. After the pizza we continued to look for the subway and after walking around for 20 more minutes looking for it we just waved down a cab. In the cab, we drove by the subway station and were glad we got a cab because it was much further than we had thought. When we got back to our street we went to the same bar as the night before and played gin rummy for a while. We returned to the room and we this time we didn't have any roommates. I listened to his Patsy Cline playlist yet again and then went to bed.