Beijing, China--Day 1

The ship docked in Tianjin, the port city about a 2.5 hour drive away from Beijing.  This is the stop we have been waiting for as our "must-sees" include Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, and most of all...the Great Wall!

The ship will stay in Tianjin for 3 days, 2 nights.  Instead of traveling back and forth each day, we wanted to maximize our siteseeing time so Penny researched and negotiated for us a package deal with China Tours that included transfer to/from ship, 2 nights in a 4-star hotel in Beijing, and a tour guide for all days to the places we chose for a customized tour!  Perfect....now we just have to get there.

Massive lines waiting to exit the ship

We wait, and we wait for the ship to be cleared

The ship was docked just before 6:00 am but it was not until after 10:00 am that Chinese immigration cleared the ship and we could leave.  And when I say "we" that means all 2,000 passengers were anxious to start their time in Beijing.  So the lines were long but we finally did meet up with our guide, Mr. Jimmy and driver, Mr. Wong.

Our friend, Mary, has been scooting around the ship with a motorized scooter as she has difficulty walking distances.  Instead of the scooter for the trip to Beijing, Mary has a wheelchair and a doting husband to enable her to participate in our walking tours and not miss anything.

Loaded up in a comfortable bus, we head to Beijing.  The trip takes over 3 hours due to.....guess what?  Traffic.  Beijing has a population of about 22 million people, so there are many, many vehicles.  But not everyone can drive every day....it depends on the last number of the license plate.  They have some system of determining that at least one day a week their car cannot be driven.  Violators are fined!  New licenses are based on a lottery system and it can take up to 5 years to receive a license since only 100,000 licenses are issued each year.

This is our first view of Beijing.....not a good day for seeing anything.  It's partly smog, partly fog, as it appears to be a little rainy today.

By the time we reach Beijing, it is time for lunch.  Here we go again....

Actually it's not bad at all.  With plenty of sticky rice, the food is either better than Korea or we are getting used to it, or we are just plain hungry!

We then headed for the Summer Palace and in spite of the rain now coming down pretty good, we had a wonderful tour.

The Summer Palace is the largest and most well-preserved royal park in China.  It influences Chinese horticulture and landscape with its famous natural views.  It's referred to as the "Museum of Royal Gardens".

Well, those views are out there somewhere, but we sure couldn't see them due to the weather.  Jimmy did his best to keep our group focused on what we would see if we could see!

 The construction of the Summer Palace started in 1750 as a luxurious royal garden for royal families to rest and entertain.  It later became the main residence of royal members of the Qing Dynasty.

Our dear Penny, always smiling, and always willing to meet a new friend, said "Nihou" to a gentleman who then wanted his photo taken with Penny!  This was just the first of many encounters we were to have with the Chinese.  Our guide said that the man was from the provinces and had probably never seen a Caucasian lady before, especially one who smiled and said "hello" in Chinese.  Before it was over his wife had taken a group photo of us all.

The rain slowed up as our tour of the Summer Palace was about over.

We still had fun in spite of the poor weather.

After leaving the Summer Palace, we headed to the Beijing Hutongs.  Hutong means a narrow lane or alley, formed by rows of siheyuan (buildings around a courtyard) where old Beijing residents lived. The 500-year old gray-sided houses and the alleys crossing with each other in identical appearance are like a maze.

We will ride in a rickshaw through the Hutongs.

This is what we first saw when leaving the bus.....and there was the discussion of us scrapping the ride...

But within minutes a parade of much better looking rickshaws appeared and we all loaded up!

Terry is wondering why we got the rickshaw with a puny little towel to be used as a blanket...

versus a nice woolen blanket!  LOL

And off we went through the maze of alleys in the Hutong.

It got quite crowded at times.

We did have loads of fun and glad that Penny knew about this rickshaw ride and added it to our itinerary.  It was then time to head to our hotel and rest up for tomorrow would be a very busy day of siteseeing....

Internet photo of our hotel

Good night!

To continue reading, scroll up towards the top of this page and click in the right-hand column the entry entitled:  Beijing, China--Day 2.