First few days

For some reason I can't actually view our blog here at the hostel, so I really have no idea what JR posted, so you will have to be patient with us if we repeat.

So Beijing wasn't as much as a culture shock as anticipated. When we arrived, I was quite intimidated by how narrow the streets are and how people were everywhere. Then again, I'd just gotten off a 13 hour flight, had thrown up three times and was running on five hours sleep I had stolen more than 24 hours before.
Add those together with the general business of the city and total construction the inner city is under, I was happy to go to sleep for more than a day.
So basically I slept off my cold while JR explored and got our train tickets.
When he returned, we explored around our hostel, which is about three blocks from Qianmen Square. Then we took the subway to the bar district and wandered around looking for a place to eat. We settled on a really super filling Korean meal of hotpot, which is noodles, beef and assorted mushrooms cooked at your table.
It was so incredibly filling. We then headed back to the hostel and ended up drinking with a mix of Brits, an American, an Aussie, and a Brazillian. Our intention was to go for one drink, but 1.5 litre beers at 6 yuan ($1 CAN) we ended up drunk on essentially $3 each and ended up being the last to leave the bar.
This morning was a bit of a wreck, being hung over we took the morning slow, ate some breakfast then napped a bit more.
The afternoon we spent at the Forbidden City, which is a preserved city in the centre of Beijing. It has all sorts of historical artitecture and was really interesting. We got the listening tour, which we had read was narrated by Roger Moore, but were disappointed to discover it was a lady instead.
We kept getting approached by people who said they were students and wanted us to go see their art exhibit or for them to show us around. We heard the same thing in four different places and decided to pretend we didn't speak English after a while because it was getting quite annoying.
For dinner we went for duck and it was amazing. We ordered a whole duck and they carved it right in front of us. It was so amazing.
You eat it in little pieces with sweet sauce and onion wrapped in a crepe.
Now we are just hanging out at the hostel bar with plans on doing some shopping tomorrow in the silk markets. We explored a supermarket today and bought cookies and fruit with intentions of going to the Wall tomorrow but aparently the hostel bus is broken down so our trip has been postponed.


Pics here are of the Forbidden City that we went to today.