Sight seeing in Beijing!

Acrobatics show

Summer Palace

Forbidden City

Temple of Heaven

Bird's Nest!

As a city, Beijing offers a lot for tourists and we just about made it all in our 5 days there. First of all we went to Tian’anmen Square, which has a bit of a sad history, but was gateway to the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City is closed off from the rest of Beijing by huge walls, and was home to the emperors during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Compared to Oz and NZ, its nice to be somewhere with such a long history, dating back to the 13th and 14th century, the city was very impressive. We had an audio guide that meant we had some clue as to what building was what, and we spent the whole afternoon in there. The next day we mastered the subway and made it to the Bird’s Nest Olympic stadium and the water cube. We paid to get inside the stadium, alongside 50 million Chinese people, and had a look around. It was really awesome to see it so soon after the Olympics and the architecture was pretty cool. Then it was on to the Temple of Heaven, which is a tall temple that can be seen all round Beijing, and is where people used to prey for all sorts of things, but I’m pretty certain it was mostly for good harvests. Well, that’s what I could fathom from my Chinese translation! Finally we made it to the Summer Palace, which is a huge park which is home to a temple and a large lake. It was a beautiful place and we were there just as the sun was setting, watching people taking boat rides, or flying kites or just…hanging around! On our last night we went to a Chinese acrobatics show which was so awesome! There was jumping through hoops, spinning plates and general crazy feats of flexibility! It was a good way to end the trip.