Wow! Time passes so fast. It's hard to believe Ben left us over a month ago!
But, I can't pass up the opportunity to put up pictures from our trip to Beijing. It was such a great trip!
John Paul, Ben and I took the three hour flight up to Beijing. We were in Beijing for five days and a little village south of Beijing for three days.
We first went to Tiananmen Square. We were stopped many, many times with people asking to take their picture with us. Finally, we had people standing in line pose with us. Our tour guide finally stopped them and told them that we were there to tour and couldn't take anymore pictures. Here is a picture of us with some random people who wanted our picture:
This happened wherever we went. Finally, we were able to get a picture with just the three of us! (This is standing in Tiananmen Square with the Forbidden City behind us).
As we walked through Tiananmen Square, we saw a huge line of people (2-3 hours long) waiting to see Chairman Mao's body. His body has been preserved. Below is just one part of that long line.
This is a picture of us with our tour guide, Linda:
The Forbidden City was next. It was amazing to see how huge this place was! It kept going and going!
There are so many details to this place. Everything from the colors and what they represent to the number of knobs on the doors.
We could look inside some of the buildings. We couldn't go inside, but we could stand outside and look inside over a gate. However, I didn't see inside many of these. I was afraid of hurting the baby! People would push and shove to get up to the gate to see inside, and it didn't matter if you were there or not! John Paul almost got knocked over a couple times. The funny thing is, the little older women were the worst ones! They looked so little and fragile, but would step on you and elbow their way in with such force that you would leave with bruises!
This is a female lion. How can you tell? She has a baby cub under her paw!
We gave in a few times to take pictures with a few people. In the picture below, this baby was shoved into my arms to have a picture with me. However, he was pretty heavy so I quickly passed him onto Ben. Well, as I did so, I felt his bottom...as in....the skin! He had a slit in his pants and no diaper. This is very common in China. When the babies have to go to the bathroom, the parents (or grandparents as is often the case) just lift up the child and let them "go" through the opening in the pants. I was wise, however, and didn't tell Ben about my findings until AFTER the picture! He was NOT happy with me! HA! :)
As we walked throught he forbidden city, there was an older Chinese lady who was worried about Ben. She couldn't speak english, so she kept rubbing his arms. It was a little chilly that day, and Ben had forgotten to bring a sweatshirt, so this grandmotherly-type lady started warming him up with her hands! She then told our tour guide, in Chinese, to get him some warmer clothes! Ben was ok until she started trying to warm up his legs too! Ha! Poor Ben!
Isn't this just a cute couple?! :)
Next, we visited a Hutong village. We rode in a rickshaw to a family home where we ate lunch.
After lunch, we went to the Drum Tower where we saw a demonstration of the drum ceremony. They used to use the drums to tell the village what time it was.
The stairs going up the tower were VERY steep.
After lunch and the drum ceremony, we went to a tea house where we had a tea ceremony and a lady showed us the "proper" way to drink tea. We tried some delicious tea!
From the tea house, we headed over to the Temple of Heaven.
In the garden area, we were able to hear a couple of choirs, watch some people playing instruments and see some people playing mahjong and other games.
Throughout our stay in Beijing, we enjoyed John Paul's "gold" membership at Marriott - and the executive lounge! :)
On John Paul's birthday, they put a little birthday cake in our room for him!
John Paul and Ben enjoyed swimming in the pool almost every night.
There was a lot of this:
And some of this:
Which lead to this:
(This bruise got a LOT bigger during the week - and there was a matching one on John Paul's back too!)
With all of our touring and walking, we felt dead tired every night:
(He really did have a bed - his own queen bed, in fact! He was just playing during this picture). Funny thing about Ben, though, is that he hated to have the maids make his bed. He says he can't sleep in a nicely made bed! So every night, he would mess up his bed before laying in it to sleep! Silly boy!
Well, that's part one. Stay tuned for part two: the Great Wall, visiting our friends, and the acrobat show!
