This post has been frustrating me for a day and a half now. It won't let me put in pictures, so you're going to have to imagine them and I'll add them in later when I get home. Get creative.
This morning, Lauren woke up at like 3AM; I am clearly
better at adjusting (in sleeping habits as well as in life in general) and woke
up at 7:30. We tried to take care of Lauren’s phone, but since she set it up in
Shanghai they couldn’t help her unless she had her passport which she didn’t,
so she was directed to “a place where they sell newspapers” so she could get a
new number. I followed the majority of the conversation from which I derived I
now speak Chinese. (Lauren attributed it to context clues and the fact that she
said passport in English, but we decided to agree to disagree.)
We then stopped at a stand appropriately named “Beijing
Breakfast” where I crossed off the third item on Lauren’s list of foods I need
to eat (steamed buns and dumplings being the first two). Unclear as to what
it’s actually called, but it is labeled on the list as “crepe thing”. It was a
sort of egg crepe filled with crunchy fried dough, chicken, vegetables and lots
of spices and it was SO GOOD. I couldn’t get over how delicious it was, and it
cost less than a dollar! We also got a sort of egg biscuit sandwich to split –
definitely not as good as the crepe thing.
[Picture of me eating - it's as attractive as it sounds.]
In retrospect,
perhaps a picture of the item itself rather than one of me looking super cute
while eating it might have been a better idea. Oops.
[Picture of me with a giant teapot statue. I'm positioned so that I'm pouring the tea - it's very well done. You would be impressed.]
And then we found a
fun statue.
We got Lauren’s phone working and then were off on our next
adventure, and this time we were taking
the subway! After seeing a woman in a shirt that said “I love your outfit, you
whore!” I got extra excited about what sorts of things I might see on the
subway. After seeing a couple both in blue stripes, Lauren told me about his
and hers shirts. This is apparently a thing in China. If anyone hoping to date me
in the future is reading this, let me know, and I’ll definitely pick us up a
pair. We later found his and hers keychains, so the opportunities to show just
how love one is seem to be pretty endless.
We eventually made our way to the Summer Palace which put
the Temple of Heaven to shame in terms of size. This place was gigantic! We
started by walking through a beautiful street modeled after a town. It was full
of little shops. We ended up buying some calligraphy from an awesome old dude
who told us his name about 100 times (literally at the end of every broken
English sentence he said), but I don’t remember it and his business card is in
Chinese. Instead, here’s a picture:
[Picture of us with an awesome old Chinese guy. He might be Confucius.]
We’re basically best
friends.
[Pretty scenery!]
The area we were
walking through was beautiful. We probably just should have paid for the one
attraction rather than for the entire Palace, since we ended up taking a random
boat tour off of the street, but it’s fine. We had fun. It was kind of
confusing though because they made us get off of one boat and onto another one,
which then dropped us off in a random, different part of the palace and told us
there wouldn’t be a boat to take us back where we started. We just rolled with
it.
[Just boatin']
Fun on the boat tour!
We were hungry again after our boat tour. I noticed a
ridiculous looking ice cream bar in a cooler we walked by; Lauren assured me
she had eaten it before and that it was weirdly delicious. Obviously, we bought
one.
[Literally - ice cream shaped like a piece of corn]
Yep. It was corn ice
cream, and yep. I loved it.
[Giant tower with many stairs]
The main tower we
probably should have climbed and seen up close, but we ended up being plagued
by an unreasonable amount of stairs today, so I’m happy we just saw it from
across the lake.
We left the Palace and decided to head back to the hotel for
lunch. Since we again decided to leave out of a different entrance than we came
in, we needed some form of public transportation to get back to the subway
station. We ended up taking one of those bike carts, which means we have
officially taken just about every form of transportation possible within the
past day and a half or so. Once back on the subway, however, we randomly
decided to get off and check out Peking University. It was a beautiful campus
filled with a lot of nice parks and green spaces to hang out in. It was pretty
big so we wandered around for awhile.
[Peking University Entrance Sign - you could probably Google this.]
[Academic building. I bet you could find this as well.]
[Then I rode a dragon. I'm very mature.]
We stopped to ride a dragon really quickly before grabbing
something else to eat. (Our general POA has been to get lots of little things
throughout the day.) We found another thing on this list – this one was dubbed
by Lauren as “ooey, gooey heart attack,” so you know I was eager to try it. It’s whatever meat you want
(we got teriyaki chicken and egg) wrapped in an ooey, gooey delicious dough,
and cooked with the special sauce everything here seems to be cooked in. I
can’t actually describe how good it was.
[Mmm. So tasty.]
Don’t you want a
bite?
With our stomachs once again satisfied we made our way back
to the hotel. Unfortunately we got off at the wrong stop so we had a long and
arduous walk home, but it made Lauren feel less guilty about the
ooey-gooey-ness, so it was fine.
We went out to dinner and to a bar with Lauren’s friend last
night which I’ll update about later and we’re now getting ready to hit the
ultimate attraction – the Great Wall of China. I hope it lives up to its name!
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