Okay, so everyone knows there are a lot of people in China but it is no joke. There were just so many people everywhere! The ride on the subway was packed like the metro gets after a caps game. Except here it is every day, all the time.
Our hotel, the Park Plaza in Wangfujing, is in a great location since there is tons of shopping and places of interest that are walking distance from our hotel. We found a dumpling place nearby where we had lunch.
Then, we walked over to see The Forbidden City, now called The Palace Museums. The Forbidden City is MASSIVE. Like I knew it was huge, but it is seriously gianormous!!!! There are also so many people everywhere!!! Mostly Chinese tourists but also tourists from all over the world. We walked around much of the Forbidden city but it is so massive that we probably didn't even cover half of it. You couldn't cover the entire place is one day although you can tell many people try since people take eating breaks and naps anywhere there is shade to rest up and keep going. Will and I decided that we were good not seeing every palace and left after a few hours. It was hot, my face hurt from squinting because it was so sunny and after a while, our feet were dying.
Next, we walked over to Tiananmen square. We saw Chairman Mao and said hello and took some pictures. It is literally a large square so there's not a lot to see although I've read that a lot of people do tai chi here in the morning. Our feet were dying at this point so we headed back to the hotel although we stopped to check out some stores on Wangfujing St. Then we went back to the hotel and took a much needed nap. We barely slept on the flight last night and with the time difference we were spent.
After we woke up, it was time for dinner. We head over to Donghauzmen Street because I had read that it was a long street with just tons and ton of restaurants. Everyone was right! There were so many places to choose from and luckily we found a place that looked happening and yummy that had an English menu. We did a combination of small plates and it was pretty good. Although I'm Chinese, my family is from Hong Kong so none of this food is really familiar. Mandarin Chinese food tends to be really spicy while Cantonese food (Hong Kong) is not. Everything ended up being pretty decent though with the exception of one beef dish that was way too hot for anyone to eat.
Afterwards, we went to Donghameun night market to check out the weird and funky street food I had read about but unfortunately it was closed!!! We are going to try again tomorrow. Apparently there's lots of funky stuff to eat like fried scorpion, seahorse, etc. We had a great day in Beijing and are exhausted! Now it's time to sleep because we have the Great Wall tomorrow...
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Location:Beijing, China
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