Saturday Afternoon in Beijing

China is wonderful. There are so many new things to see.

The bus rides are very long but the tour guide tells us all kinds of things about China as we travel. I think it took us more than an hour to get to the Great Wall.

It was still raining when we got there and pretty foggy, so we could not get good pictures or see very far. We still went up on the wall and walked all around. John made it to the highest point and bought a plaque that says he did inscribed with his name. I wandered around on top of the wall for over an hour on my own. Some of it is very steep. Everyone in the group was walking all over and laughing and having fun on the steep places. We had to lean at quite an angle. Everyone took lots of pictures.It was cool and rainy the entire time but that did not matter.

Next we took a long bus ride to Tiannimen Square. It is huge with several buildings and statues. Many people were there.

Everywhere they are getting ready for the Olympics. There are huge, impressive buildings that have been built, The landscaping is beautiful. China is obviously very proud to have th Olympics in their country and are going to a lot of effort to make it wonderful.

Inn the evening we went to another wonderful restaurant with delicious food. This time we tried Peking Duck,which was very good. Like the meal last night and the meal at lunch, there was glass turntable in the center of the tablet that they kept filling with all sorts of food for us to try. Each time we had at least 10 different dishes to share. Chinese food is very good and much of it is very similar to what Chinese restaurants serve at home. Delicious!