Our hotel was in a traditional Chinese house. It was a bit hard to find and down a tiny old street. It only had five rooms all surrounding a little outdoor courtyard. Our room was a little small and the bathroom, which was separated from the rest of the room by a glass shower door, was clearly thrown together at the last minute. The place was built before indoor plumbing was common. I think they still didn't have it everywhere because there were a lot of public toilets all around the streets. The hotel had a lot of character though and the front desk guy was nice. Our bed was this really intricately carved old fashioned Chinese bed. The mattress was a bit hard but that is pretty common in China. The second night they accidentally overbooked our room and they put us in a really, really tiny room with a bunk bed and no bathroom inside. You had to walk outside into the freezing courtyard to use the bathroom. Also, the lock on the door was broken so the guy closed it with a chopstick.They didn't charge us for the night because of their mistake but it was still a bit uncomfortable.
The first and third nights in Beijing we checked out Hou Hai, a pretty lake (where they ice skate on winter days) with lots of cute bars with live music and restaurants surrounding it. It is also a good spot for dinner if you want something other than Chinese food. They have Chinese foods as well, including unusual street foods like scorpion skewers. The sign said it was also called Lotus Walk.
The next morning we went to the Bell and Drum Towers, two pretty buildings that were right by our hotel. We most likely wouldn't have gone but we passed them on the way to the subway and thought we may as well check them out. In the Drum tower we stumbled upon a live performance. There was also a porcelain gallery next to them that we checked out. They did tours of the area in Rickshaws but we didn't have time to try it.
Afterwards we went to the Forbidden City, a ridiculously well preserved palace built by the Ming Dynasty. We got the audio guide which had a lot of interesting information. We spent almost a whole day wandering around it and skipped the other places we planned to see that day. It was worth the five hour train ride to Beijing to see the Forbidden City alone. It would have been better if it were a bit warmer out though.
We took a quick look at Tiananmen Square. It is pretty much just a plain looking big park. There were a ton of soldiers walking around and they didn't like it when I took pictures.
We had dinner at a hot pot place on Ghost Street. The street is decorated with tons of lanterns to scare away the ghosts.
The next day we went to the Summer Palace, the Ming dynasty's summer estate. It wasn't quite as impressive as the Forbidden City, but it was still pretty cool and we spent an hour or so wandering around. We got the audio tour but it wasn't really worth it, the info was pretty minimal. I bought this really cool butterfly made out of bamboo that I was hoping to give one of my nieces but it got all dried out and sad looking after a day. I was still pretty impressed with how the guy made it in three minutes. He is an amazing craftsman and it only cost about 10 RMB (2 American dollars). I think they sell similar toys in NY anyway.
Then we went to Peking University, the best school in China, to check out "Yi Tah Hu Tu". Our friend Joe, who studied there, told me the Chinese name is a homonym for meaning "one pagoda, one lake, one library" or "a complete mess". The buildings were really pretty and also built by the Ming dynasty. People were ice skating on the lake. It was a beautiful campus.
We had dinner by Hou Hai Lake again at a Thai place. Then we checked out a nearby street called Yandai Xiejie which had a bunch of little shops and restaurants. We went back for breakfast the next morning.
The last day we didn't have much time, we just walked around a big, really touristy shopping street near Tiananmen Square called Qian Men Da Jie. We bought a few gifts and some grapefruit tea, my new favorite drink which I discovered when Danny ordered it at one of the cafes by our hotel. Danny got his Peking Duck while I wandered around and shopped.
In contrast to Beijing, almost everything in Shanghai was slapped together in the past 30 years and is really ugly. Shanghai is mostly a bunch of ugly high rises that nobody put any thought into from an aesthetic perspective. The city is planned well for traffic but if you are walking around it is just so ugly. To be fair once you go inside some places are sort of nice but it still has no history. I also may have a slightly skewed perspective on Beijing since we mostly went to touristy places. Some of the tourist sights in Shanghai are ok but they just feel fake because they mostly were built in the last 30 years. Anyway, I felt inspired to travel more after our weekend. Me and Danny have been working on planning as many trips as we can while we are in Asia. We still have to go back to Beijing at some point to see the Great Wall since we decided not to do that part in the winter.
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