Beijing

On our second day we got down to doing some touristy things. We headed out to the Summer Palace. On the way Brian said we were at our stop on the subway so we got off and then I asked Brian was he sure because it didn't seem like the right place. He quickly got back on the train just before the doors closed and left me at the wrong station. Brian has become about a hundred times worse at reading all types of maps or guessing at directions since we started on this trip and is continually leading us in the wrong direction. So I couldn't get mad because I shouldn't have listened to him :) Anyhow the summer palace is quite beautiful, with a big lake and giant open outdoor corridor that runs most of it's width. We headed up to a fragrant temple of Buddha (to be honest it's hard to say what things are called, everything is translated to about three different English names. You are much better off just trying to match the Chinese patterns than the different English names) which was up a good few stone steps. At the top we took pictures (and lost each other for almost 10 minutes around one rock) and saw a giant gold Buddha. We traveled around a the lake to see the dragon boats and a big stone boathouse shaped like a boat. We stopped on the long corridor to look at a pretty gallery with what seemed like a cross section of the different painting styles in China. On the way back from the palace we stopped to see the Olympic stadium. It's quite a long stretch of path between two subway stations. On one side you have the water cube and on the other the bird's nest. The structures are quite impressive but they seem really unused or underused now. Also the water cube is not just a giant cube filled with water, it's just a cube that looks like it's filled with water. It would be so much more impressive if it was. That night the hostel had hotpot so a big group popped into the bar. We all threw food into a pot of boiling water and chillies and then waited for it to cook. For the most part everyone took out the same amount of food they put in except a few people who stole other people's meat. We ended up sitting at a table with a Taiwanese and Belgium couple who were thinking of moving to China. It turned out we were going to the same part of the great wall the next day. Later two girls from Scotland pulled up chairs to our table. Everyone was sharing tables so when you arrived you just had to ask if the seats were free. They sat at a table with an American who said they could sit there. Then a half hour later he told them his friends were here and handed them their drinks. The drinks were pretty cheap in the hostel and everyone was getting along so we stayed in. Also did shots of something dreadful but the bar man didn't say what they were.