Beijing
June 2


6/2 - My last full day. I was picked up successfully in the morning by my guide after another light breakfast. This time, I had a guide and a driver to myself. That was the good news. The bad news was that this was my guide's first day of working. But she was nice and at least somewhat familiar with the sights we were visiting. What she was not familiar with was the procedures for obtaining tickets. But she managed to work things out.

The first stop was the Forbidden City that I had glimpsed the evening before. Our driver let us off at one end of Tienenman Square and we made the long walk up to the first gate.     

The complex consists of a series of five walled areas, each entered by a gate. Contained were building used for various purposes such as meeting diplomats.  You could peer into some of the buildings from the outside.

   No trees: evidently the Empiror was worried about enemies hiding behind them.  We eventually walked out the far end, which featured a protective moat, and traversed another block or so to meet up with our driver again.

The second stop was the Temple of Heaven. This is a park area. 

Upon arriving, we were immediately thust into thousands of people doing interesting things such as their morning exercises, singing, theatre and playing cards.  

This was during a time when I would normally expect people to be working. But here they were.  The park itself was nice with many trees and benches.  After wandering among the people and trying one of the morning exercises, we eventually entered the actual Temple area.

The Temple of Heaven itself was the most impressive building I saw in China. The combination of its height and colors made it notable.

        

We wandered throught the park for an hour until it was time for lunch. Evidently there was a restaurant in the park. My guide called up a golf cart that took as to the restaurant. We were the only guests there. As my guide was not all that interested in eating, I was once again confronted with too much food. Although adequate, the restaurant was not at the high level of any of the other places that I had eaten. The golf cart took us back to the car, so we could drive to the last stop of the day, and of my visit to China, the Summer Palace.

It took us about 45 minutes to navigate the Beijing traffic. I was told about the 1000 new drivers per day to go with the 11 million bicycles, motorcycles, pedestrians and carts, all, it seemed, trying to cross each intersection at the same time.

The Summer Palace is a massive park complex surrounding a lake.           

The story of the palace is of a dowager queen, fairly recent, I think, who was exiled there so as to reduce her influence on the Emporer. We wandered around, eventually climbing a hill, and getting a little lost.  Several of the possible places to enter were blocked because our tickets did not include them. I do not have any idea what they contained. Eventually, asking directions enough time, we found our way to the appropriate gate and met our driver for the trip back to the hotel.

On the trip back to the hotel, I asked my guide to make a call to confirm my pickup time for the trip to the airport on the next morning.  This took about 20 minutes to accomplish, including the driver volunteering to pick me up 1.5 hours after the time (5:00am) I had paid extra to be picked up. She finally reported that she had received a confirmation.

I ended the day and the China visit with a small but tasty western meal (salmon sandwich) in the hotel. That evening, I packed my bags, which now included a raft of presents, for my return.