So we went to Beijing on Friday evening by train. The train was very fast, 300 km/h. It took almost five hours to get to Beijing. We had a hotel near the city centre so it was easy to walk around the city. Our group consisted of eight persons from our exchange group. On Saturday we walked around and saw the Tiananmen Square, the national museum of Beijing and we also walked around the Forbidden City. In the Forbidden City we ate Beijing duck for the first time. It was pretty good! On Sunday we walked to a shopping centre where they sold copy items, for example Louis Vuitton etc. Then we went to a beauty salon and the girls got manicures and pedicures. The boys got foot massages. It was really nice to relax after so many kilometres walking. After the shopping centre we went to the biggest Adidas store in the world (or so they say) and after that we ate in an Arabic restaurant called 1001 nights. The food was expensive but very delicious too. There was a belly dancer show and music.
On Monday we went back to the Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City and spent more time there because the first time we only visited those places quickly. The Forbidden City was so crowded that it was crazy. We believe there were thousands of tourists in the area because of the national holiday. After the tour we went shopping and used the local subway to compare it to the subway in Shanghai. In Shanghai the subway is better. We noticed that the air in Beijing was really bad and many of us got the flu or a sore throat. The air was also very dry. Most of our group had a bleeding nose during our stay because of the air pollution. In Shanghai the air is much better because the sea is so close and it’s windier here. In the evening we went to see the Olympic stadium called “the bird’s nest” and also the water cube, where they arrange swimming competitions. In the evening there were beautiful lights in the buildings.
On Tuesday we went to the Great Wall of China. We arranged the trip through the hotel and we went to Mu Tian Yu part of the wall. We left early in the morning and we stayed at the wall for three hours. We went up by a chairlift and came down by a toboggan. The toboggan ride was fun! The weather was really nice and the sun was shining all the time. The mountains were amazing and it was good exercise for us. We didn’t realize there would be so many stairs. We thought that the Great Wall was the best thing in our trip and really worth visiting. For both of us visiting the Great Wall has been a childhood dream and now we got to see it. After the toboggan ride we had lunch and left back to the hotel. In the evening we had a reservation to a duck restaurant downtown. For some reason the restaurant didn’t have our reservation anymore. Luckily they had a table for us and we got some Beijing duck. It was good but very expensive. On Wednesday we left back to Shanghai in the morning by the same train we got to Beijing. The trip was really nice and we got to walk a lot. Beijing was filled with culture and the city seemed less modern than Beijing. It is a good city but of course we prefer Shanghai. We think we’ll remember this trip a long time!
The Great Wall of China - Mu Tian Yu section.
Tiananmen Square.
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