Nihao from Beijing! - Day 10

When asking our fellow train passengers what the first thing they're gonna do when arriving in Beijing is, the answer was always the same: shower. Take a long, hot shower. After 7 days on a train without a shower, Ruut, Sophia and I could nothing but agree.

However, when arriving in Beijing, showering suddenly seemed less important.There was so much to see and we where in BEIJING. In CHINA! In ASIA! Just the three of us. Crazy.

So, after waking up at 5:00 AM, cramming your last things into your rinkka and sadly saying goodbye to the 'home' and the people you've become so fond of, we decided there was no time for showers and other unimportant things, we wanted to experience everything!

So, with Sophia as our amazing map reader, we walked around 4 kilometers, while the sun was rising and bakery's opening their doors, to find our cozy Happy Dragon Hostel, hidden behind an awesome market place. (Think fresh fruits and vegetables, raw meat, nuts, seeds, clothing, tools, and weird Chinese pastry treats, that we of course had to try immediately.)
But no time to dwell, so we left our rinkkas at the hostel, and half past eight found ourselves standing outside the gates of the Forbidden City.
(Tickets cost 60 yuan and the place is huuuuuge.... so prepare for spending at least 4 hours there if you really want to explore the place. Opens at 8.30, and we strongly recommend you be there by then,as tourists started pouring in by hundreds the later it got)

The Forbidden City was impressing, but sadly last nights goodbye party and the early awakening started to take its toll, so we mostly enjoyed the City by sleeping in the sunshine and watching the Chinese tourist go tourist crazy, taking pictures of everything: from us to the items in the gift shop.
Oh, and we saw a lot of little children peeing and pooping... everywhere. Not even the stairs of the Hall of Supreme Harmony or the Gate of Heavenly Peace where safe zones.
And the Clock Exhibition Hall - nice, but a little too hyped by Lonely Planet China.

Something we do recommend, however, is climbing up the stairs in Jingshan park to the temple at the top. The 360 view of Beijing is AMAZING. Entrance costs 2 yuan, and sadly you'll probably not have the view to yourself.

On the way to the Forbidden City we where lucky enough to spot a vegetarian restaurant called... Vegetarian Restaurant, uniquely enough. So on the way back to the hostel we stopped here.... and the food was DELICIOUS. Sorry for repeatedly using capital letters, but this time I really have no choice. Since we're running out of yuans, aka computer time, we'll tell you more about the food after the next time we've visited it. Because there will be a next time.
The staff was extremely helpful (well one of them, the one who knew english. The rest mostly stood around watching us (we where the only customers) and laughed at our failing chopstick use. But being laughed and stared at by the Chinese is nothing new, since we couldn't stick out from the mass anymore then we do...) and we got to visit a Buddhist worshiping room with her, and take part of a Buddhist ritual.

After this, and being tricked by a camera salesperson to buy some sort of lens for the camera (got a new memory card as well though!) we finally took the long overdue shower back at the Hostel.
Tired as can be, we still look forward to tomorrow when we get to discover more of Beijing!
So far this city seems fantastic, with the only minus being you having to risk your life everytime you try crossing a road. When the pedestrian light goes green, we cross our fingers, take a deep breath and rush over the street nervously trying to watch every potential killer (car). In Moscow there didn't seem to be ANY traffic rules, but crossing a street was child's play... the traffic always stood still, so all you had to do was zig-zag over wherever you felt like it. (yes mom, we where still very careful. promise) Here there are traffic rules, but they seem to be: A red light is just a suggestion, and a pedestrian just an easily removed obstacle if you have a high enough speed.

Jeez, enough about today! Will let Ruut and Sophia take over the computer now, and they'll fill you in on what we've been up to during the last week of blog-quietness.
But as said, we're alive, IN BEIJING and life couldn't be better!

//Hanna

Ps. Things were looking bad once today. We couldn't get out from the train station in the morning! You needed some sort of ticket. After harassing every official we could fine with questions they did not understand, we finally tried to get out by showing them our train tickets. Worked.