We arrived in Beijing at about 6:50 am & getting through immigration was easy. This was a huge but very well-run airport.
Arrival In Beijing.
I do remember the customs girl fondly. She knelt in front of me & smiled up at me as she patted down my legs & around my crutch to check for hidden contraband. If she had continued, she may well have discovered something hidden in my underwear.
As we could not get into our hotel in Beijing until the afternoon, we were soon separated from our luggage. It went on ahead to the hotel to wait for us, whilst we all went to view The Birds Nest, The Summer Palace & The Llama Temple.
The Birds Nest.
We had a brief stop outside the National Stadium in Beijing, aka The Birds Nest Stadium, which was used to host the Olympics in Beijing. We didn't go inside the building. It was just a hop-off, hop-back-on-again photoshoot opportunity.
National Stadium Official Website. (English language link.)
The Summer Palace.
We stopped at the Summer Palace in Beijing for around 2½ hours. The grounds here are beautiful. It's difficult to believe the scale of the man-made lake & the number of people it must have taken to construct it when it was built.
We had lunch & were served jasmine at the Summer Palace. The tour group was split into two groups & was served lunch by girls in traditional Chinese costumes. The food was a range of Chinese dishes laid out on a lazy Susan in the middle of our table. The food was delicious, but it was very hot & humid eating in a building with no air conditioning or even any fans.
After dinner, we crossed Kunming Lake on a beautiful Chinese dragon boat. Once we had crossed Kunming Lake & finished our short visit to the Summer Palace, we rejoined our coach before heading to the Llama Temple.
Photos from the Summer Palace.
Summer Palace Official website. (English language link.)
The Llama Temple.
The next stop we made in Beijing was at the Yonghe Temple, aka the Llama Temple, to see the many fantastic Buddhas on display there. It was strange to see lots of people who didn't understand Buddhism buying incense sticks to pray in front of the Buddha. They were not lighting the sticks, merely placing them in front of the temple in a tray, which I imagine are recycled & sold to people again tomorrow. Many of them were not even taken out of the bundles in which they were purchased.
The Buddhas were very impressive, especially the last one, which was made from one tree & fills the building it is in, standing 80 metres above ground & being buried 80 metres below ground, it was made from a single tree.
Yonghe Temple Information on Wikipedia.
Traders Hotel.
We arrived at our hotel at around 2:30 pm & most of us went for a quick nap before getting ready for a welcome drink & an evening meal in the hotel. I had a shower, set up my computer & Skype-called my mum. I thought I would post today's photos on Facebook. I then discovered that Facebook has been blocked by the Chinese government & is not available in China. Luckily, my website isn't blocked & I will be able to post my holiday snaps as I travel around.
Dinner was included & we all ate together in the hotel restaurant, enjoying a Chinese meal served in two groups around a lazy Susan. Again, the food was fantastic. The beer in the bar was around ¥45 a glass (less than a half pint). I walked to a local mini-market & got 4 cans of Budweiser for ¥35. I returned to my room to watch some football & have a cold beer, but by 8:45 pm, I was fast asleep after a long day. I had been awake for 38 hours & travelled halfway around the world, to a continent & a country I had never been to, it had been a good start to the holiday.