On the Saturday we had a taxi take us to the Great Wall. I didn't think my parents would be able to manage the Jinshanglin to Simitai trek that Dave and I had been on previously so took them to the Badaling section. Badaling is the most Touristy area of the Wall. There was coffee shops, fair ground rides and even a roller coaster to save you walking up and down the wall. The taxi driver obviously thought it was important to save Mum and Dads old legs for the walk ahead and purchased us two tickets for the coaster. The slow ride up at a ridiculously steep angle was quite un-nerving but the the trip down was surprisingly good fun and faster than expected. Mum's fears that it would turn into a "mini nemisis" proved unfounded though. Here is a video from the ride, mum's manic laughing is probably scarier than the ride itself:
The walk up the wall was nice but very cold. I have seen friends pictures from high season and you can barely move at Badaling for all the people but on a day like it was it was (unsurprisingly perhaps) empty. We walked up and down the wall to the next section and back. We couldn't organise with the driver to pick us up somewhere else so we just did a big loop the loop. The steps were a lot easier to climb than on our previous trip but there were still some areas that were very steep and very hard work. Upon reaching the top Mum announced that she was "Knackered"-which made us all smile.
After the Wall we visited the Ming Tombs of Ding Ling (yes, I know you probably won't believe me). These were quite interesting and it was good to see where the old kings and queens had been buried but I think we were all just disappointed as everything was a reconstruction (once again).
Next we took the cab all the way to the Summer Palace where we spent about 2 and a Half hours just walking around. The Summer Palace was exaclty as described- a palace where the kings went duiring the summer; i.e. the Chinese version of Sandringham. I think the Summer Palace was my Parent's favourite part of the trip. It look splendid and was a great place to whiile away a few hours. With the huge lake frozen the pictures that could be taken were superb as well, and as always Dave and I are never ones to dissappoint.
In the evening Dave and I treated them to a meal at Fuku. Being our favourite restuarant in Beijing so far (we have visited each and every time we've been there) we thought it was a good way of getting them some decent Chinese food and also an excuse for us to go there again. Despite the Taxi dropping us off in the wrong place again (and this was despite having a map of Houhai with it drawn on) we got to the restuarant and had an enjoyable meal. Mum and Dad made some mistakes for further on in the week though. They both ate with Knife and Forks and complained that there was only 1 English menu. I just told them to wait for what my city had in store for them- there would be no such luxuries there.
We left on the Sunday to Bring my Parents back to Shijiazhuang, but the train was not leaving until 5.30pm so we had a whole day to do things. In the morning we visited an art gallery that had some amazing paintings on display - some of them were being sold for 400,000RMB- and also had an exhibition of the world's largest man made scrolled. That some fella had spent 18 years or so carving the pieces and printing. After that we went to Tian'eman Square and the parents posed for the usual Tourist Photos.
We then went to the Forbidden City. It turns out that Forbidden City is the largest Museum in the world. I felt slightly stupid upon realising this as I had spent about 20 minutes moaning that "I don't want to go to the Museum, I just want to walk around the Bloody Place". So thats what we did, we walked around the outside and then realised that we had to go into the 'museum' to see anything of interest. Once inside we were all shocked. The place was huge. We spent about 3.5 Hours there and could have done with much longer, we just about managed half of it. We were amazed at how quiet the place was the further you ventured in and explored and could not believe that we were smack in the centre of one of the World's biggest and busiest cities. The Whole place really was fascinating, and we even managed to find the 'mythical' Forbidden City Starbucks-which we had to visit, if only or the sake to prove it existed.
Dave and I left Beijing that weekend feeling overfed and exhausted but also happy that we had managed to see more of the city's 'highlights' in these 2 days there than we had previously managed all together in our past 3 attempts.
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