Beijing Welcomes You part 1 of 3

To catch our flight we left wednesday RIGHT after teaching and flew from the guangzhou airport and got into Beijing at around midnite. From there we took a shuttle bus to a stop where our hostel said to go. From there we were just supposed to take a 10 minute taxi to our hostel. For some reason, we cant figure it out, they didnt know where it was or just plain wouldnt take us. Its actually happened a couple times outside of this one time, so its wierd. we have to ask our hostel whats up. So we're trying to decide how to get to our hostel. We passed some hotels on the way to our bus stop and figured that would be our best place to get help. So here's four girls with suitcases walking the deserted streets of Beijing at 2am in the morning (turns out the hotels were quite a bit farther down than we thought...) So we finally get to this really really nice rich hotel and thankfully the guy at the desk was SO helpful!! At that point we just wanted to cry and give him a huge hug for helping us. So they called us a cab and wierdo/stupid driver gets us lost and takes us down these two real sketch alley ways.. FINALLY we find our flipping hostel (mind you its about 3am). So yea... pretty much started Beijing with a little adventure.

Okay full day in beijing:

This was exploration day. We are 5 minutes from Tian'anmen Square and the Forbidden City. So we headed that way to go check it out. It was a cool sunny day, which was pleasant. So we get to the square and meet two girls who are "art students". We've read/heard/just know that these are really con artists. They tell you they're art students and take you to their exhibition rooms and sell you "originals" for way more than they actually are. But our two girls were way way nice and we got like our own little free personal tour guide around the square. and then of course they took us to their exhibition room and whatnot (only Lorenda was fool enough to buy something) (these girls arent exactly street smart/china smart about some things, they totally the gullibles that these people here look for). Then we parted ways. And we got this cool little map from the Raffles Hotel that helped us the night before and it had everything that we could do and where it was. So then we walked to Tian'anmen Square but we really wanted to know what we were looking at so we figured we go either the next day or the next.

So then we went to somewhere that i knew i had to go to. The olympic stadiums. LA-GIT. All day we travelled by subways. We've pretty much conquered the Beijing Subway system. So we went to the stadiums and its still pretty much under construction so we couldnt get close to it at all. The "Birds Nest" (the main stadium) was HUMONGOUS and SOOO cool looking! For reals it was awesome. And the aquatic center was neat looking too. So that was cool that we got to see those.

Then on our map..we saw.. the Beijing Zoo. haha. We were like um HECK YES WE'RE GOING! We got their at 5:40 and our taxi driver told us that it was closed so we're like dang... but we went and checked times and whatnot but then they let us buy a ticket and go in. All we wanted was to see the pandas. So we booked it in and went straight to the panda house. oh. my. gosh. I am in love with pandas. Seriously, they are every bit as cute as everybody says they are. Oh my goodness they were cute. So we're in the zoo so we figure meh, lets walk around until we get kicked out. I mean we're already inside why not push the limits. A lot of the animals werent out (of course) but we still got to see some foxes and birds and stuff. But def when i come back to Beijing i'm taking a whole day for the zoo, and aquarium thats right next to it. But we were there for sunset and it is a gorgous zoo so i got some good pictures from that. But we were just so excited to see pandas!! in china!!

After that we headed to this bargaining street and spent some time and shopped a bit. We were all exhausted and turns out i'm not a on-your-feet-all-day person. So my feet had been aching from the beginning so i'm just like hey guys i'll just pay for the taxi home (instead of taking the subway) (taxi 15 yuan, subway 2 yuan) but i was tired so i'm like screw it lets just get a taxi. So we talk to like four of them and thats when it happens again, they wouldnt take us. It was the wierdest thing. I mean i could've pointed out where to go but they wouldnt take us. Soooo yea....now Jessica's not in a good mood because now we have to take the subway, which isnt bad my feet just ached and i didnt want to walk and stand and walk and stand. So our route back included 4 stops, 3 of which we had to switch lines, which you have to walk up a bunch of steps to get to it. So pretty much what should've been a 10 minute taxi ride back, took a flipping hour. ugh. it was crap.

But i had an amazing day, so stuff like that dont bring me down none. haha. Wo ai Beijing ♥