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I think my favorite site was The Summer Palace. I could have spent the entire day there. There were people there practicing their calligraphy using water and painting the stone floor. It was mesmerizing to watch. After that we went to the Great Wall which was pretty packed. We did however see a camel.

On the second day we went to the Forbidden City and walked around to Tiananmen Square. The coolest part was walking out of the front exit of the Forbidden City, which was lined with officers, and looking back to see this ginormous portrait of Mao. There was no time to change lenses, so I’m afraid I couldnt fully capture the scene well.

At the square, we passed this really cute Chinese girl and she let me take a picture of her. We also caught the subway back into Wangfujing and it was completely packed tight on a Saturday afternoon. Rush hour in Beijing must be a nightmare.

Beijing was colorful, crowded and full of food. I got sort of camera-tired towards the end and ended up just enjoying the food and eating instead of documenting so the food pics don’t fully convey the variety. We had duck of course, and it was so juicy and tender and probably the best thing we ate while there. But street food was also really great. Niko was really into these sandwiches we bought off a side street from a small stand which were basically sesame bread sandwiches with a fried egg, lettuce and some sort of spicy sauce. We went to the night market of course and had a hard time deciding what we should try. The fried scorpions looked interesting, but I couldn’t get past the idea of the outer shell being crunchy. We kept it tame and went with some sort of chicken (or at least we think it was chicken) on a stick, some dumplings and a stick of candied fruit. The fruit looked like small apples but were very soft, almost creamy on the inside. I’ve never had anything like it before, but perhaps it was a very tiny apple that was cooked? They were really good though…