The Phillipsons: The Summer Palace and much more...

(Written about June 24, 2009 U.S. / June 25, 2009 China)

The morning started at 0600 (yes, the clock is set to show a 24 hr display). The breakfast at the hotel was fabulous! There was a mix of American and Chinese food... from waffles to fish and steamed buns. Of course, Tammy loves those steamed buns. To be honest, so do I. I made a pig of myself, but I didn't feel too stuffed, so it was great. The coffee was very strong and welcome. Then, we were ready to go.

Then it as off to the Summer Palace. We had it great... we were the only one's on the tour and our tour guide, Michele, spoke English very well. It was a personalized tour and we got to talk about everything and ask all kinds of questions. On the transportation we were able to just talk about the city and people and all kinds of stuff. Here is a picture on the ride... that is the Olypmic torch building in the background. I believe it was the media center during the Olympics.

Random Note: Because of our issues with trying to order "spicy," but not too spicy food, Michele gave us a translation. Bu Tia La = "Little Spicy"

The summer palace was great. I will not go into all the information she gaqve us, but will touch a on a couple of things and add some photos. Apparently, this whole area was the property of royalty forever, but was destroyed by the farmer soldiers and rebuilt by ruler that they called "The Dragon Lady." She was never the official ruler, but always picked weak-willed rulers, so that she could sit "behind the curtain" and make all the decisions. She used much needed money from the country to completely rebuild, beautify, and expand the summer palace the way she wanted it. Here are some photos of the palace. The lady with Tammy is Michele.

The huge rocks were hand-carried from the south of China.... Amazing.

The pictures of what looks like a really long hallway is an outdoor hallway that is the longest in the world. I believe she said that there are 547 hand-painted pictures across the top and some are being restored. Michele took a moment to talk about one picture that just happened to be in front of us. The story was about the Monkey King. This is a story that we have read the boy's several times. She said it was interesting talking to us because of Tammy's Chinese background and that we were already slightly knowledgable and appeciative of what we were seeing.... nice complement :)

By the time we made it though the summer palace, it

Next up, Michele asked the driver to drop us off down town by the Bird's Nest (the Olympics area). The first place we went was a grocery store. If you know Tammy, you know she loves food! We were enthralled by the variety available at the store and we could have stayed in there longer, just checking everything out.

But eventually, we continued on. We found a Nike store and thought we went into it, just to see what prices were like. However, we actually walked into a store right next to the Nike store, which was almost identical and even had shoes with a symbol that looked almost exactly like the Nike symbol. It took us a moment to realize that it was some Nike-like Chinese place.

Then on we went to another grocery store. We decided to just pick up some food from the store and eat it out on the street as a snack, so we could keep walking around. I like to try different foods, so I ended up getting the only drink that had NO English words and NO pictures of anything to be able to tell what it was...

Well, this drink was TERRIBLE!!! It tasted like it was made with some type of root. Oh well, I drank it all. Tammy was joking that maybe it was some type of male vitality drink, as we only saw men drinking it. Probably just a coincidence, but you never know. The bottle looked a lot like the famous Grandpa Richard "fix everything" medicine rub.

We also stopped at a really nice tea store and bought some Jasmine tea. The staff was very attentive. It was hard to get used to. If Tammy pointed to something on the shelf to ask me a question, before we knew it, a lady would show up with a sample.

While eating our snack, we met Daniel, who was from Germany. He is a pediatrician, specializing in oncology. He is in Beijing for a conference, but was skipping the meetings to see the city.... Busted!

Next, we walked down to the Olympic Village and went into the Bird's Nest. Michele said that they really do call it the Bird's Nest, even in Chinese. I thought maybe it was just what Americans called it.

After seeing the Bird's Nest, we went over to the Water Cube. They have built up a whole industry around the Water Cube. They have water cube fashion, jewelery, etc.

We bought a collector's coin with all the 2008 Olympic cartoon guys on it. The boys will think they are pretty cute.

After leaving the Water Cube, it was time to hit the subway. But on the way, we walked across the grounds of the Olympic Village and took some photos of some of the statues. Like the one in the picture below. I'm not sure who this guy is, but I'm sure there is probably a story we will need to look up. (Maybe someone will comment on this post and tell us who he is)

Then on to the subway. Michelle had told us that the subway had been around for a while (like the early 1990
's), which I thought sounded pretty new. But the outer loops and the line specifically to the Olympic Village and the one to the Airport were just completed for the Olympics in 2008. It was very nice.

And this was our exit to walk back to the hotel.

We went up to the room for a moment and Tammy made a quick check of the internet.

Then it was off to dinner. We just wanted to have some simple Chinese noodles, but once again, we found out that it is very hard to communicate with Charades. I'm sure we looked crazy pointing at other people's food. I need to figure out how to say, "I'll take an order of that." It ended up that the place we were at did have noodles, but when we showed them our picture translation book for noodles, they wanted to make sure we understood that they sold only "like-noodles." What they had were made from rice, not flour... which didn't bother us at all. Good thing a nice girl heard us trying to talk and offered up translation services. They also didn't understand that we just wanted noodles. We also needed to tell them what we wanted in our noodles.... Who could have known it would be so challenging to get noodles for dinner. Anyway, after eating for a while, I saw a refrigerator in the corner with beer. I'm not sure if I was supposed to ask for it or get it myself, but I wasn't taking any chances. I walked over and got one myself and said "Thank You" in Chinese. Well the whole meal was about $3.50, including the beer.....