BEIJING, CHINA

TRAVEL DATE - March 2012

STAY @ Holiday Inn Express Beijing Temple of Heaven No. 36 Nanwei Road, Xicheng District, Chongwenmen & Qianmen, Beijing, China 100050

We (Myself and my colleague) arrived Beijing airport in evening from Dalian airport.We extended our ticket for a day to stay in Beijing and see the Great Wall of China. Hotel was a bit far and it took us almost an hour to reach there. We reached hotel at 10 PM and ask receptionist to look for a next day trip. She was able to manage a trip but suggested that we will have to go another hotel to meet the guide. Next day morning we headed for Hyatt hotel after breakfast, Where we met our guide. We were small team of four. He told us that we are going to cover Forbidden City, Tiananmen square, silk factory, precious stone factory and finally The great wall of china. Our guide was speaking good English and he had good knowledge as i asked too many questions.

We could not go to  infamous Tienanmen square as there were some High level Political meeting going on. I was able to get a glimpse of Tienanmen square from a distance. 

Tiananmen square  

The Forbidden City was the Chinese imperial palace for 500 year starting from 1400. It is a beautiful example of Chinese architecture. It was renovated just before Beijing Olympic. It spreads over a large area and i would have been surely lost without guide. 

Front gate of Forbidden city 

Guard marching inside the Forbidden city.

 Gate of Supreme Harmony of Forbidden City

           

A gilded lion in front of the Palace of Tranquil Longevity

 We were told by our guide that all the utensil was gold coated, which was chipped away by Japanese.  Also these utensil was used for water storage in past.

 

We were taken to silk factory,where i saw the silk making process from silk worm.A guy from factory explain the process in detail and suggested us to buy some silk clothe from their shop.

Life of silk worm

Extracting silk thread

Making silk bed

Next destination was jade stone factory.  Jade is a precious stone found in china.There were beautiful items ranging from small bangles to big dragons. 
 I just walked inside the factory and shop. Even the price of small items was unseasonably high.

Mythical jade cabbage

Olympic medals made of jade stone

We had lunch in the restaurant inside the jade factory

It took us almost an hour to reach The great wall of china.On the way I was able to see the mountain terrains and the the great wall. Our guide told us that only a small part of the wall is accessible to public.After reaching the gate our guide arranged the tickets for us.

 I was just thinking how they were able to built such massive structure. The wall is wide enough to pass two cars at a time. Our Journey to the end of  wall  was bit hectic but the view from the great wall was amazing.It is well maintained and there were no sign of degradation, I could not see the other end of the wall. There were many local tourists and few of them requested us to have picture with them.

Mountain topography on the way 

                            

Starting the jouney 

Final destination.

Names engraved by tourist on  the wall 

In evening ,we started our return  journey  to Beijing. 

                                   

I did some shopping in one of the  mall in Beijing  The mall was having only counterfeit items and I was not able to distinguish the difference from real one . I brought D&G bag for 30$ :). , souvenir and some toys for my nephew

After shopping ,we returned to our hotel and started onward jouncy.