BEIJING - Part Two

For our second full day in Beijing we didn't have anything planned beforehand, except we knew we needed to go pick up our night train tickets to Xian (we had a potentially tight timeline depending on when we returned from our Great Wall hike, so to be save time on the night of our train we wanted to have our tickets with us!)  We loved the Summer Palace so much that we decided we wanted to go back and explore a bit more! Also, even though our tour said it included Tiananmen Square, it was basically our guide just pointing at it across the street saying "thats Tiananmen Square" (FYI its across the street from the Forbidden City)  I never realized before going to China how censored things are there!  No one talks about the Tiananmen Square incident, you're not allowed Facebook or youtube or even a google email account! What a different world.

Anyways, I'm glad we went to the train station in advance to pick up out tickets because it was so busy and it was nice to get an idea of where to go and what we would need to do on the night of our train, because we were going to be in a rush!  I like to be prepared.  After that we took the train to the Summer Palace, and I'm so glad we did!  On our tour we only had about 30 mins and this place is massive!  Its not only a palace, but a lake and huge grounds and tons of other buildings.  It was quite busy in some areas, and quiet in others which was really nice. 

This was the coolest dock I'd ever seen!  Is it a dock?  Is it a boat? 

The street into our Hutong

The air bnb where we were staying left this map to a corner store nearby.... I'm usually pretty good at maps, but we could not find this store!

The train station was seriously crazy.  People everywhere!  I know it doesn't look crazy in this picture, but it was 

Trains for days!

Dragon Boat ride across the lake at the Summer Palace

the place we stayed had a cool wall!

Amy was being all artistic with the black and white lifestyle shots

Bye bye little Beijing home!

And this is why we could never find the little corner store!  It was under construction!

Mystery meat skewers at the Summer Palace! One bite and done...

Look at my little small backpack! I did pick up a tea set so on the way home I was more heavily loaded in the form of random carry bags... 

Where's Julie? 

As we were heading to the exit a group of about 30 people came and wanted pictures with us! (Well, mostly Amy, but they pulled me in too)  We were in like 20 or more pictures.  I guess 90% of tourists are Chinese and just from other areas where they never see white people...

We got to Tiananmen Square close to sunset, there were heaps of people around and we were wondering why?  They lower the flag every night at Sunset and have a little ceremony thing...

So many cute bridges and waterways at the Summer Palace!

A water digger for Charlie!

Next up - Great Wall Hike!