Travel

First impression of Beijing for me is the amazing amount of landscaping beside the six lane roads, which at this time of year features flowering peach trees, cherry trees and magnolias. We stayed 3 nights at the hotel in Beijing, which had a rather cute chest high robot ambling around cleaning the floor in the lobby. If you stood in front of it and blocked its way it would stop and stay something (in Chinese of course) and managed to sound cute doing it.  Sometimes there was another robot in the dining room that carried dirty plates back to the kitchen.

Sight seeing proper started on Saturday, with a bunch of optional tours including Tiananmen Square and Forbidden City. We had been told before hand by the guide that it was huge, really huge, that didn’t really convey the size. It’s estimated that we walked about 6kms looking at what we saw, and that didn’t include meandering. Might be worth looking at on google maps to get an idea of the size…..I can’t do it at my end. China and google not very compatible at present. People with iphones can use the apple maps. .

Most of the group elected to see the pandas at the zoo, but a group of 7 of us wanted to see the summer palace instead, which resulted in a pretty interesting adrenalin loaded car ride trying to get the gardens before they closed.  Mike was the white knuckled front seat passenger, delegated the task of holding the mobile phone. We didn’t make it in time to get in, but the ride was quite a nail biting experience with lots of very close call lane changes.

The great wall got the heart rate going a bit – we could choose how far we went but were limited by time. OK, limited by muscle power and aerobic capacity as well if truth be known. I was intrigued to find a rest room at the top. Talk about room with a view – put Mooloolaba’s million dollar loo to shame. The tour then organised a visit to a centre for traditional Chinese medicine, for a $5.00 foot massage. We could have our health assessed by a Chinese medical professional. Free diagnosis, but expensive remedy. Mike was told he needed to take herbs to prevent having a stroke – only $600 for a month. Others in the group were also going to be charged a similar amount for whatever ailment they had. No buyers so far as I know.

First bullet train ride on Monday – 300 km an hour. The trip took about 2 hours. The ride was smooth, but not much leg room for sitting. Then a bus trip to the hotel. We were told to expect a better hotel than the one in Beijing, but began to wonder when the bus detoured off the main highway to a one way dirt road with a tractor coming the opposite way. Those with ipad maps found out that the little dirt road was the approved route to our hotel. Then back onto normal roads again and we went past what appeared to be a whole new town of high rise buildings being built. As it turns out this hotel is better than the last….mammoth sized bed.