China (part 2 - Beijing)

After a great morning at the Terracotta Warriors, our lovely guide, gorgeous George, accompanied the Beijing 5 (Aoife, Jenn, Mel, Ben and I) off to the train station for our glamorous soft sleeper train off to (you've guessed it) Beijing.  This was a bit of a side trip, but it was all organised for us which made it really easy.

The girls' luxury cabin aboard the sleeper train

Slippers!

Gosh we're civilised with our glasses of red wine

We arrived fairly early the next morning, but had an epic 1 1/2 hour wait in a very bargy queue to get a taxi up to our hotel.  After a quick wash and feed we were straight out on the subway (just as clean and cheap and safe and easy as the Shanghai one) to the Forbidden City.  Other than the fact it was completely packed and there was rubbish EVERYWHERE (what is it with China and making a mess of national monuments) it was an amazing place.

Aoife, Jenn, Mel and Me doing our best Chinese poses at the Forbidden City,
accessorised with audio guides

Where's Ben?

Ben, Jenn, Me, Mel

Me, Aoife, Jenn, Ben

The next day was similarly exhausting as we decided to save money and get a bit adventurous and join a government tour (rather than hotel or tourist tour) out to the classic section of the Great Wall, and the Ding Ling tombs.  Much to the bemusement of all the other people on the bus (all Chinese) we bought tickets and plonked ourselves in the back row for our little adventure.  The first stop was rather inauspicious, at a waxworks with models of all 16 Qing dynasty emperors or something equally thrilling.  We declined to go in, and the next stop was much better, at the Ding Ling tombs which were pretty cool.

I swear Chinese people have more photos of us than we have of them. We were quite the tourist attraction.
This was waiting outside the waxworks.

Trying to blend in with the Chinese crowd, Ding Ling tombs

Inside the Ding Ling tombs

Mel, Jenn, Aoife, Ben and me at the Ding Ling tombs

Ding Ling tombs

From there we went for a fantastic included lunch, where the poor Chinese people on our table looked at us in horror (not least because Aoife had her chopsticks round the wrong way!)

Aoife, Mel, Me, Jenn and Ben with our lovely food

After the destruction

From there it was finally on to the Great Wall at Badaling.  We were dumped in the car park in the rain and then informed that we had to buy a cable car ticket up to the top.  A long queue in the rain (with a crazy chinese woman inserting herself under Mel's umbrella) and we were off to the top.  The wall was completely heaving, it was a bit rainy and the visibility was terrible, but it was really nice to see the place for real.

More Chinese getting their photo taken with us - this little kid was just shoved in!

With the lovely Cinderella

Out on the town

At the Irish bar

You can take the Irish out of Ireland.....

The next day was a bit of a wander round; Tiananmen square, the Foreign Legation area, a wee bit of shopping (sorry Ben!) and then off to the Olympic park.

Celebrating 90 years of communism.
I have to say that the place didn't seem too communist - lots of wealth kicking about.

Long lines to see Chairman Mao.  We didn't bother.

Bird's nest stadium

Water park

Inside the Olympic stadium there were waxworks of all IOC chairmen over the years.
It was bloody hilarious.  I thought this one looked a bit like Cathal!

Final day in Beijing and we were absolutely knackered!  Aoife and I went off to a temple and then to a temple of shopping and then we all headed off for a (very delayed) flight back to the truck which was now parked up in Chengdu.

Lama temple

Lama temple

Lama temple

Lama temple

Fake flowers for sale outside the temple

Silliness in the mall