So, been a while since the last post but only travel to the US since Cyprus so I though I would wait until I went somewhere a little further a field. This time it was for a visit to Beijing. I was there in late July, just in time to see them making all the final preparations to host the 2008 Olympics. Even better, my friend Michelle was working in Beijing for the summer so I had a place to stay and a very excellent, Chinese-speaking, tour guide. I spent a lot of the time walking around Beijing and looking at temples, monuments and wandering through the backstreets. Below is a picture of the Lama Temple which was one of the highlights of Beijing. I drove by the birds nest (national stadium) and the water cube (national aquatic center) but security was very tight with less than 2 weeks to go to the games, so I couldn’t get any good pictures.

One thing that I can say about Beijing in July/August is that it is HOT and humid. I am glad that I wasn’t running 400m or playing in a soccer match, I was soaked through just walking around the streets. On one of the days I did the obligatory visit to the Great Wall and felt like I deserved a gold medal after over 3 hours of walking up and down. I do mean up and down, I don’t think there were any flat sections in the area where I was walking. That nice looking grey in the background, not mist. Humid, muggy, haze.

One of the best parts of the trip was the food. The Chinese food was great obviously but there were specialties from regions of the country that I had never seen before. Some of the strangest things were “Fire of Ignorance Tofu” which was served along with a tofu version of Peking duck (vegetarian restaurant, not my choice but really good). By far the strangest though was the “squirrel fish” (below). Interesting presentation and very tasty but I don’t think I would have ever ordered it if I had only seen the picture.

I was pretty much at the mercy of Michelle the whole time because almost all of the places we went to had no English on the menu. There might have been something available if we had asked but I like to believe that there wasn’t. Even still, there was a dish the first night that was a mystery. Michelle though the character meant “deer” or “donkey”, we ordered it and it was delicious (later confirmed to be deer). The picture below is Michelle ordering at one of the fancy places we went to. The staff to guest ration had to be approaching 1-to-1; service was amazing as was the setting and the show after dinner. The only thing that creeped me out a little was the woman with a fan-shaped hat and platform shoes standing over my shoulder the whole night waiting to refill my teacup whenever it was less that ¾ full.

Beijing was a great place to visit and walk around; despite the heat there were people out on the streets and sitting in parks. One of the nights we went to one of the restaurant areas to walk around and have a couple drinks. At the entrance there were a huge group of Chinese couples ballroom dancing to Chinese music. Some had some pretty good moves; others just tried really hard and seemed to be having a good time despite apparently being deaf to the music.
I left the day after they opened the Olympic Village and you could feel the excitement of the city growing. Everyone was very proud to be from Beijing and was ready to show the world that they can pull off the biggest sporting event in the world. I can’t wait to see the opening ceremony and the show that China puts on. Here's a link to some more of my pictures:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=5p42e5n.389facj7&x=0&y=tfco95&localeid=en_US