Expensive tea parties - Day 14

Our plan for today was to get up at dawn and go buy our train tickets for Nanjing...well, around nine o'clock we dragged ourselves out from the hostel towards Beijing train station, rubbing our sleepy eyes and cursing the weatherman for the false promise of sunshine (it's still cloudy and windy, but at least it's stopped raining...).

We easily bought train tickets at window nr. 10 (not nr. 26 as is said in LP). Luckily foreigners have a window of their own, since we still are too polite to survive the "queing" system in China = first come, first serve. Tickets for Train T65 cost 150 yuan/person, hard seats (we'll see how that goes...)

We spotted a vegetarian restaurant on our way to the Science&Technology Museum (I finally got to eat my long craved sweet&sour vegan pork dish!) but we won't return since Hanna's food turned out to be a no show. And standing outside where the museum was supposed to be we were informed that it had been moved...in 2008, so our LP from 2009 is badly outdated.

After a two-block walk we arrived at the Olympic Park. Hanna was extatic. After paying a 50 yuan entrance fee (pretty pricey) Hanna and I sat in the front row, trying to relive the Olympics. We also hired a couple of segways to ride around with on the tracks (150 yuan each, we still think it was worth it). Some film footage might be posted where we look very "white and nerdy" alongside all the Chinese business men. All this while Ruut was being attacked by hordes of Chinese tourists wanting her to pose on pictures. Which she did, for almost half an hour, she's far too nice for her own good... Finally she escaped to a nearby toilet where the cleaning ladies in turn compared skin colour and hair with her. After this lack of privacy it's no wonder she looked fed up when we were reunited outside the stadium.

Without having learnt our lesson we then travelled across Beijing to see Mao without checking when the mausoleum closes. There's something about dead dudes that make us forget to check the facts...

While sitting on some stairs at Tianamen square, wondering what to do next, two Chinese people approached us. When we leart they weren't art students we joined them for a walk. An hour later we received our bill at a nice little teahouse in an old hutong district, 220 yuan/person... Huups, that's what you get for not checking what you order. 800 yuan for a pot of tea and 100 yuan for friggin grapes (with SEEDS!) and some nasty BEEF biscuits that we didn't even EAT! We were sooo RIPPED OFF. The tea house wasn't even THAT nice... For a bill totalling 1100 yuan you'd think we'd even get to photograph the tea pouring routine, but no!

But our new Chinese friends are not to be blamed. They were as shocked as we and immediately payed their share and even offered to help with ours. But since their budget was even tighter than ours we politely declined, but still ended up with a 100 yuan package of jasmine tea each (as a parting gift). They told us much about the Chinese way of life and talking to them was very interesting.

Since our favorite restaurant already had closed and our budget wouldn't have held any more expenses we headed home. We somehow ended up buying loads of food at the local supermarket, but we had to, you know for the Wall trip tommorrow... Let's hope for nice weather!

-Sophia