Thursday, September 1, 2011
Birthday.
8-31-11 was my 30th birthday. Determined not to waste the opportunity to make it truly memorable, my teammates and I planned out a fun filled day in Beijing. Two of our readers, a mother and daughter, agreed to be our tour guides for the day - which was a great relief because their presence meant that I didn't have to assume my default role as navigator.
We all got up early and rode a bus to the Temple of Heaven. I decided to skip the temple and opted for the nearby Pearl Market where I ended up watching hundreds go by on bicycles as I waited for the market to open and contemplated how much weight I could lose if I rode my bike to work everyday . . of course, this only reminded me that I was 30 and didn't have a job to ride a bike to.
By 10:00 am, we had regrouped and hopped on another bus to Tiananmen Square. Somehow the large city bus squeezed through the heavy traffic and deposited us just across the street from Tiananmen. Taking lots of photos of this and that, we made our way across the square, and to the front of The Forbidden City.
Walking through the Forbidden City felt a bit like a magic show. Each time we would walk through a large gate with enormous red doors, there would be a large square to walk across and an impressive ancient looking chinese building at the top of some stairs. Then we'd walk around the building only to find another large gate with enormous red doors and walk across another large square and up more stairs to another impressive ancient chinese building. Behind that building was another large gate and so on . . Eventually, the magic show ended and like Alice in Wonderland, we found ourselves in a beautiful garden where we all lost track of each other. After a short time (cause we were all very hungry by now) we finally found each other again and together found the last gate which led us to the street.
We hopped on yet another city bus which took us to a subway station where we found an actual Subway Restaurant. The Americans were tired and just wanted something light, like a sandwich. Our Chinese guides were tired and just wanted something light like some hot vegetables with rice (we couldn't convince them to even try a Subway sandwich)! Eventually we all got just what we wanted and made our way back home after a short subway ride.
After saying thank you over and over again to our chinese friends, we finally made it back inside our little Beijing apartment. We got cleaned up and literally hung up our sweat-drenched clothes to dry. Seriously, the humidity was worse than taking a hot shower in a green-house in Savannah, Georgia in July.
There was a knock on our door at 4:00 and it turned out that my teammates had arranged for the local Dairy Queen (yes, a REAL one) to deliver a cake for my birthday. So we had ice-cream cake for dinner before heading out again to go to the Chinese Acrobatic Show. Despite being an obvious tourist magnet, the mini Cirque-du-Soleil show was impressive and yet another reminder of many things that I will never be able to do.
After the show, the four of us decided to forego the planned normal taxi ride back to the apartment and opt for a rick-shaw style taxi instead. Of course, we didn't realize our drivers were trained in military combat maneuvers. The exciting and sometimes terrifying ride produced sudden screams and fits laughter - a perfect way to end any 30th birthday.
The bikes were endless!
Me at Tiananmen Square.
What I saw at Tiananmen Square . . . A little of this . . .
And a little of that.
Just one of the big red gates. Luckily they were all already opened for us, cause the looked really heavy.
The crowds at the Forbidden City.
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