11/12/2015 by photosbyhank

Oh sunny day

Thursday, October 8th dawned as a bright sunny day. It felt a bit strange after the smog days we had but also because Curtis left for work and Lucille and I headed out on our own.

We started walking south and were soon were heading to Chaoyang Park (Sun Park).

Slightly used

Chaoyang Park is the biggest park in Beijing at about 2.8 kilometers long by 1.5 kilometers wide and hosted the beach volleyball events for the 2008 Olympic Games. It is also the same park that I saw in my first full day in Beijing when Lucille and I went to Solana Mall. Granted, we were at the other end and it was raining.

I finally found some local exotic wildlife on my trip.

Well, they did have an accent.

Solana across the lake

Love the sign

There is a really nice walking path in the park so we walked for quite a ways checking out different aspects of the park.

By now we were at the amusement park area.

Washrooms

It was already getting close to lunch time so we headed to the subway to go back to Niuge Jiaozi Dumplings near the Forbidden City.

Not even that busy on the subway

When we got to the dumpling place it was a lot less busy than the first time we tried it. But the food tasted just as good.

Only customers

We were going to head to Tian’anmen Square but decided to go revisit Jingshan Park to see the view in the clear air.

We came in the east gate this time and found a path that climbed up about 3/4 of the hill without any stairs.

The only stairs to the top today

I found another cool tree trunk to shoot

Visibility was much better today so I decide to take a few more photos to compare to yesterdays.

Forbidden City

Forbidden City Panorama

We walked around to the west side to get a look at Beihai Park.

There’s mountains back there

Since we could see so much today I went to the north side too.

Towers at Olympic Park in the distance

We were done checking out the view so we headed back down the hill to go visit Tian’anmen Square.

Along the way we stopped to smell the flowers.

Since it is a fairly long walk we made a pit stop before leaving the park.

I thought the sign was cute but I wasn’t taking photos of the squat toilets.

I stopped to grab a few shots of the moat and wall of The Forbidden City since we had to pass right by it.

Almost an hour later we arrived at Tian’anmen Square.

It is a huge area; intended to hold up to 600,000 people and yet there isn’t a bench to be found.

North Gate

Mausoleum of Mao Zedong on the left and The Monument to the People’s Heroes

Big flower basket

The Monument to the People’s Heroes is 125 feet tall and is has a single guard on each side.

You can not get very close to the monument as they have it chained off some distance away.

National Museum of China

Security guard with surveillance tower behind him

The flowers were starting to look a little worse for wear but not bad considering the date on the calendar.

Back to the subway to head off to our next stop

Nice quiet station

Traaaaaaaaaaain! He turned off his lights as he got to the station

Olympic park was to be our next stop and it was a couple of transfers to get there but we found it ok.

Getting from the station to Olympic Park proved harder than the journey there. We found ourselves walking on the scenic route.

IBM has a pretty cool building

Saw a small load being put on the truck

Finally we made it.

You are Here “G3”

I’m not sure what services they actually offer

Like so many places we had been, Olympic Park was a rather large area. Olympic Stadium; The Bird’s Nest, is the most impressive building there. It sits on the east side of Pangu Plaza and the Beijing National Aquatic Centre or Water Cube is on the west side.

Bird’s Nest in the late afternoon sun

Water Cube

We walked around for a while more while we waited for Curtis to come and meet us.

Beijing is trying for winter Olympics

Rosie’s sister made this leg. Rosie was too worse for wear to travel

Water Cube close-up

Looking west

By now Curtis was leaving work so we started to make our way back to the subway station to meet him.

We met up with Curtis and took started our subway journey towards food.

The subways were a lot busier by this time.

We had Italian for supper at Annie’s Italian Restaurant. It wasn’t terrible but it certainly wasn’t the best Italian I’ve ever had. From Annie’s we made our way to Peter’s Tex-Mex in search of a good strawberry margarita. I didn’t think we found it. It was a pretty average drink.

We flagged down a cab with no problems and headed home.

It was so much walking today that I wore out my shoes. We did 37,197 steps today but very little stairs.

We played some aggravation; I got my ass kicked and it was bedtime.

26/11/2015 by photosbyhank

The Great Wall and back

As was getting typical for me, I was up at dawn again. It looks like a nice day out so I might as well do something productive before we go see the Great Wall.

The view from my window

My room faced north so I don’t really get to see the sunrise so I went to the balcony to see how it looked from there.

Sunrise Panorama1

No colour to be seen except for the glow on some of the buildings.

Today we were going to see one of the 7 wonders of the world – The Great Wall of China. Well, part of it anyway as it’s more than one wall and covers over 5500 miles. We are going to the Mutianyu section which is considered to be one of the most beautiful sections and as such it has been fully restored.

Tony, our driver, picked us up at 7:30 am and we were soon on the highway. Traffic flowed pretty good until we hit the toll booths. It was interesting watching the traffic move in and out of their lanes going on to and off of the shoulders trying to get ahead. It’s not like they put booths on the shoulders so they had to fight their way back in line. It took us longer to get through the toll area than it took to drive the miles to get there.

Tony dropped us off and we walked in to the ticket area.

A ticket for admission, one for the chair lift and one for the toboggan ride back down.

Once you leave the ticket area you board a bus and it drives you up to a long flat area that is full of shops and restaurants.

Panda’s and sheep are friends?

Once you navigate past all the shops and vendors it’s a short walk up the hill to the chairlift.

It’s a long way up.

There was no waiting at the chairlift so we were on our way in no time.

Nice view on the way up.

Up, up and away

After about a 5 minute ride we arrived at the base of the wall. Just a couple sets of stairs – again with the stairs – and we are standing on top of The Great Wall.

We are lucky enough to have a good air day and you can see for a long way.

I never in my whole life expected to be able to do something like this. It was awesome to see.

Selfies over, we walked up to the first lookout.

View from the top

There goes the tour

The Moffat’s

We could walk along the wall if we wanted but it involved a lot of climbing and none of us wanted to do that. So it was time to hit the toboggan run.

Whee!

Zoom zoom!

It’s a lot harder to lean back on the toboggan and take pictures than you’d think. Having to hold the brake handle to keep going didn’t help.

The fun over, we got back on the bus and headed down to the exit.

The guy in the yellow hat’s job is to hand out flyers.

He’d doing a good job. When Lucille got close to him, he started giving her one, looked at her, the pulled it back. I think we were racially profiled.

As we waited for Tony to pick us up I grabbed a couple of shots near the entrance.

The flowers still looked pretty good for the time of year.

Great Wall Panorama1

It’s not even noon when we get back to the apartment. Took an hour and a half to get to the wall but only an hour to get home.

Must be time for lunch so we head over to the mall and Element Fresh.

After lunch we went to one of the places I had on my list of places to go see – 798 Art Zone.

I had read that 798 was full of art galleries, shops and restaurants so I really wanted to go see it.

Another selfie

When pigs fly

Some of the children’s art

I knew we were in the right place

There were a lot of booths and activities for kids along the street.

I took this because I know Samantha Burns would be so jealous

They were sure having fun

Looks like so much fun

She is really in to it

I found some grafitti but a little late for my photo club assignment.

Just down the street we saw some more painting going on.

A bit further along the same street is a shop that actually sells grafitti supplies. It was pretty cool.

There was so much neat stuff to see that it was hard to walk as I stopped to take pictures so often.

The whole area is a former industrial area and the mix of old and new is intriguing.

Everywhere you looked you’d see something different.

Painting his pottery

Making pomegranate juice.

Very focused on her work

Even more things to see as we walked around.

Gum?

A fixer upper

Good use of a phone booth

As we moved into a different area stuff just got weirder.

Close-up of the moon.

I thought it would be bigger.

Planes and balls.

I’m not even sure what that is all about.

Moon creatures?

Red, white and blue cup mounds?

We had been in 798 for about 3 hours and started to make our way out. I could of spent a couple of days there but Lucille did have a list of things for us to see and do.

I thought I’d shoot some “normal” stuff.

Metal fence

A row of valves is normal. Right?

And some not so normal stuff.

It’s a…..?

He doesn’t look that impressed considering he’s riding a dinosaur.

As we approached one of the gates I noticed a familiar sign on a building in the distance.

Pit stop

Biggest one wins?

Rosie and I on the way out of 798

Leaving 798

The 798 Arts District is huge and if I had 2 full days there I would not be able to see everything. It flows into the 751 area that appears to have more of the same kind of stuff as well as fashion shops.

This was the best day so far on my trip. I was in awe at The Great Wall and in total wonderment at 798.

As we made our way to find supper we saw a small traffic jam.

Not sure what was causing the hold up but was glad we weren’t going in that direction.

Just a few cranes.

As we got near Peter’s Tex-Mex I saw something that reminded me of my friend Steve Parkin and I just had to take a couple of photos.

Short bus

It was around 6:00 pm when we got to Peter’s but it was feeling like a long day. The food was ok and for a Tex-Mex place the strawberry margarita wasn’t great as they had run out of strawberries and substituted mango instead.

We had a toast to my dad on what would of been his 75th birthday. He would of never gone to China in a million years but I was very happy to be able to go.

Considering all the things we saw today 16635 steps seemed low but we did take a car ride for a good chunk of it. Tomorrow’s another day maybe we’ll do better.