Beijing - Day 1

What a day we had! Our day started out dragging ourselves out of bed, eating a quick breakfast at our hostel and then headed to Tian'anmen Square and Forbidden City. We knew it was close to our hostel but not quick as close as we thought! Being our first day and all, we were motivated to walk. We should have taken the subway. It was probably a 2-3 mile walk to Fiebidden City and then if course we were at the back entrance and so we had to walk another mile to get to the main entrance. THEN actually walk through Forbidden City! We first checked out Tian'anmen square and took some pictures. We then took the underground walkway to Forbidden City. No matter how many times I've been here, I still live it! It wasn't too crowded but definitely more so than in December when Thad and I were here. After walking through, we went in search of lunch. We ended back at Wangfujung street and were both craving western food. We found a mall there with a good, non-Chinese restaurant. We both ordered pasta, yum! After lunch, we made a quick stop at Dairy Queen for a blizzard (yum) and then time to hit the markets.

I had written down the subway stops for the markets we might want to visit. We decided to go to one of my favorites first, ya show. We got off at the right subway stop and walked and walked. And walked some more. After the "7 minute" walk we took, we are starting to realize we may not find it. After walking a bit farther, we gave up and headed to the subway station. We decided to try another favorite market, the Dirt Market. They were supposedly open until 6 pm but that was not the case. We arrived a little after 4:30 and everyone was packing up! We walked around for about 10 minutes and not a single person tried to sell us anything. For those of you, who have been to China, you know how rare this is! Frustrated and tired, we headed back to our hostel. We had a rest before heading out in search of dumplings. Thankfully this trip was successful! Delicious! We were exhausted and decided to call it a day since we had to be up early the next morning for our trip to the Great Wall!