Our first full day in Beijing...

Our first full day in Beijing actually turned out to be only about half a day given that we only woke up at around 2 p.m. So it was only about 3 p.m. until we finally got to the streets. One of the first missions was to find something that could serve as breakfast and Patrick and me settled for some nice cookies for about 0.1 Euro each. We then proceeded to move towards the main train-station as we wanted to get some actual information about the train-options to Ulaanbaatar given that everything we knew up to now was quite iffy so to say. As expected things turned out to be rather difficult with my personal highlight being the first counter which simply closed once we started asking some questions about possible trains. (Do you remember that electro-shock idea from yesterday, that would come in handy in such a situation.) Anyway, after much waiting and looking for an international counter we ended up forcing the officer at counter #1 to switch with his collegue as he couldn't speak any English. We then found out that the train-option we had been looking for (and the travel agent in our hostel told us existed) isn't actually available. So after more deliberation and sitting in the sun with little children having a good time with talking to us (and trying to convince us that we should hand them our ice-tea bottles) we moved on to the "Beijing International Hotel" to find the office of the CITS (think it stands for "Chinese International Train Service") which of course had closed 30min before our arrival (atm the opening times are something like 8:30 a.m. to 12 and 1:30 p.m. to 5 p.m.).

By this time the sun had started setting and the light was just beautiful for taking photos so Patrick and me went for our cameras and starting shooting. The highlight was definitely Tian'anmen Square which looked extremely nice, hope to show you some photos of it at one point or another. As everyone was quite hungry, especially after seeing the ceremony of a Chinese flag being taken down (somewhere close to Tian'anmen) we decided to go into a small local restaurant in one of the side-alleys. The menu was Chinese-only so the food was chosen with a mixture of pointing at photos, our neighbour's dishes and random selection on the menu. Everything turned out to be quite good, even though we didn't really know what it was. Needless to say that I also enjoyed the beer!

In the evening we wanted to look for a bar or something similar to go out a bit. Apparently going out is not a big thing around here because the lady in the hotel responded by "I've never done it myself, but I heard that you might something long this street." So we went there by subway and on foot only to find a rather nice but very quiet road with the minimum amount of life there. After some time we did see some lights going up into the sky and therefore found a disco / KTV place of sorts. However we didn't decide to go into it which turned out to be good decision as just behind the disco there's a small lake (can't remember it's name though) which is surrounded by lots and lots of bars. Patrick mentioned that when he was in Beijing 2 years the whole place was just one huge construction site so this is definitely something quite new and artificial. We ended the day with beer and cocktails before heading home for some well-deserved (I'd like to think;-) sleep. Of course it's close to 3 a.m. by now and the others are sleeping already while I'm still typing these lines...

Tomorrow we're planning to get up at around 8 a.m., grab some breakfast and then head off to that CITS office to purchase the train-tickets to Mongolia. Afterwards we intend to go to the Forbidden City and visit another temple or two in the afternoon. For the evening we might go to a (a) Beijing Opera or (b) Beijing Duck dinner. For Wednesday we booked a tour for the Great Wall which should also be fun as we'll be going to one of the less touristy spots and walk 10km on the wall before being picked up again.

Well, good night for now...