Kathy & Paul's Adventures Abroad

Xiaoling has been very helpful in making us feel more comfortable in our new environment. On Saturday she arrived at our hotel door at 10:00 to take us on an excursion into downtown Beijing. She told us she doesn’t drive in Beijing and I understand why – the traffic is heavy and the drivers are crazy! There are rules of the road here but they think they are for everybody else – and they love their horns!

I digress – so we took the subway into the city and we walked to an elegant restaurant which is famous in Beijing for its Peking Duck. Xiaoling ordered and we had a delicious meal of Peking duck, bamboo shoots, beef slices and crepes. To eat the duck we were shown that you put it on the crepe with a special sauce and roll it up – like a wrap. Then we had royal cake which Xiaoling explained would have been served only to the emperor in earlier times. I had visions of chocolate cake and sugar plums dancing in my head, but it is made from yellow beans with some sugar in it.I mean no disrespect as I am sure it is considered a delicacy, but I do love my sweets! After the meal we were given a certificate which indicated that this restaurant has been in business since 1864 (the third year of Tongzhi, Qing Dynasty) and we were served the 898799th duck since they opened.

Next we took the subway and walked some more until we came to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, a famous landmark of Beijing. The Forbidden City is a series of enclosed courtyards and buildings which in China’s era of dynasties was the home of many emperors and their servants and courtiers. At the entrance to the Forbidden City is a large picture of Chairman Mao, the leader of the Communist government until his death in 1976. We walked around this famous area for a while and took some photos.

Then we took a bus to Xiaoling’s office  which is located at the very stately Friendship Hotel. There is an American style restaurant in the hotel which serves Western type food like steak and french fries, and we had delicious mocha ice cream. (Dessert at last!)

The next stop was a cell phone store that sold about 500 different kinds of cell phones and we bought a very simple phone that doesn’t do much except let you call people. It cost about $60 Canadian. We thought it would be a good idea to have one in case we get lost.

By this time we had been walking from place to place for about seven hours so we were really ready to go back to the hotel. We hopped on a subway car and were back to our stop in about ten minutes. We still had a twenty minute walk to the hotel so by the time we got there we were exhausted.

We did a lot on Saturday, ate a famous delicious meal, saw some quite historic sites,ate tasty ice cream and bought a cell phone! And then we came back to the hotel and collapsed!  But it is a day we will never forget!!