Sunday, June 1st – I believe

We are leaving Beijing and going to Hong Kong this morning after sacrament meeting. If you ever go to Beijing – stay at the China World Hotel – it is absolutely beautiful. The rooms are large – the beds are comfortable and the food is out of this world. Dad has been having a wonderful time enjoying all of the different foods. I say the food is wonderful, because the hotel has American food along with local food.

We’ve visited every place there is to visit in Beijing – the forbidden city, Tien-M square (this isn’t how it is spelled), the palace of heaven, the summer palace (couldn’t take the boat ride because it is too windy), and yesterday we went to the Great Wall. It took us 2 hours to drive there, and 2 hours to climb a portion of it and then we stopped for lunch at a beautiful restaurant and then drove home for 2 hours.

On the way to the Great Wall, we noticed lots of cars just parked in the last 2 lanes of the freeway – before the toll booth and after the toll booth– and not parked very well – just pulled off. They were out of their cars walking around and talking to each other. We asked our tour guide what was going on and she said they were waiting for stores and museums to open and so they wait on the freeway. It was really interesting.l

We went to the side of the Great Wall that is in a very beautiful part outside of Beijing. Lots of trees and very green with villages around it. We parked the bus, and walked up a hill with of course lots of vendors along the way. They all say, “lady, I sell you this for….” Everything in Beijing is negotiable. Kelsey hates negotiating and can’t do it. In fact he has “ruined” a couple of my deals. You have to have a price in mind of what something is worth to you – they name their price and you have to becareful, because they might be saying dollars or Yuan. So if they say – 100 Yuan – then that would be about $15 in dollars. But they will switch what you are saying – like I’ll say, “I’ll buy that for 10 Yuan (which would be about $1.50 – and they will say no – 15 and then I’ll say 10 Yuan. Finally dad decided to go back to the hotel and I went to the Silk Market with a group – and I find it very interesting. They only thing that they will not negotiate is the Olympic stuff. The Olympic stuff, however, is much cheaper than the US. There is even “fake Olympic stuff – and they sale that really cheap. The official Olympic stuff can only be sold at official sites – which are easily recognizable.

Back to the great wall – after we walked up the steep, steep hill to the gondolas, then we took the gondolas up to the wall and the ride was beautiful. Not very often can you see the wall – but it was a very nice day.. The wall goes all along the top of the mountainous area – it isn’t all connected because much of it has fallen down – but where we were – it seemed to go forever. There were lots of people walking along the wall. The wall goes up and down – sometimes really steep and it is made of steps – either really close together or really far apart. It goes up and down like a wave with a tower looking thing at the crest of every hill – and the towers all have open windows which allowed for the bowman shoot down on the bad guys. Also it provides good ventilation so when you get to the top of the hill and need to rest – you get a wonderful cool breeze. I was exhausted and didn’t think I could go any further – but wasn’t there yet – so we continued only to find out that we had to go more – so continued on the wall – and then someone yelled to us that we passed the toboggans to go down the hill – so we had to climb back up the huge hill. Needless to say – it was amazing – but exhausting. The toboggans to go down are like the Alpine slide in Park City – it was a beautiful ride down.

When we got back – we finished our shopping at the Pearl Market and Silk Market and then had to pack everything back up to leave Beijing this morning.

Headed to Hong Kong – and I will post another blog there. I’m going to get internet in the room – so I should be able to do this at night – instead of 4:00 in the morning. Love, Mom

By the way – in the lobby of the hotel, there is always someone playing the grand piano during the day and then at night they have a string quartet playing – it is absolutely beautiful!