China

Our final stop of the day was the Silk Alley market. Our guidebook described it as a tourist trap outside market. What we found was different – an indoor multi-level market.…

Summer PalaceThe next day, we took a taxi to the Summer Palace outside the city. It’s a huge site, and would take most of a day to cover. Unfortunately, we only had a couple of hours.…

BeijingOperaNext up on our whirlwind tour was the Chinese Opera. We returned to Qianmen by metro (so fast. Forget taking a taxi in Beijing during rush hour, which appeared to be most of the day!).…

princegongs2We returned to Beijing, and visited Prince Gong’s Mansion. Although quite picturesque, it was packed with tourists, which made it hard to enjoy (and get good photos of!). There’s some tourist trap thing where you can pay to get in to a building and drink tea an

The following day we was our day to visit the Great Wall of China (at Badaling, the most accessible section from Beijing). The previous day, we had already scoped out the departure point for the public bus that we thought would take us to the Great Wall.…