China and the Great Wall, again........

I'm One of the best things about our truncated world tour is going to a lot of these places twice. China and the Great Wall is one of them. We started out by taking an overnight trip to Beijing called focus on Beijing.  

The way Oceania runs their tours is that everyone with an Oceania excursion goes to the lounge at the time that is given on their ticket. There you sit and wait until your excursion is called; first you go and exchange your paper ticket for a a bus number, then you go and sit and wait until your bus number is called. This is the most efficient way I have ever seen of getting people to the proper excursion. Now I have an additional plan. I go up to the people passing out the tickets and ask how many buses are going on our tour. If it is more than one, I wait for the last bus. My theory is the last bus will be the least full. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. This time it did. We went out to get on our bus and it turned out to be a van with only 12 of us on board. It was great, the other bus had about 30 people on board. We also had a super guide. He was a big man for a Chinese man, so he told us to call him Big Chi. He was knowledgeable and funny. Good thing because we had an almost 3 hour trip into Beijing. Once there we got to see the Forbidden City and the Tienomen  Square. We could only go to two places because we got such a late start at the port. 

The entrance to the Forbidden City

Another view

The number of dragons indicate the importance of a building. The more dragons there are the

More important the building is; this is the

Most dragons you'll find on a building. Therefore this is a very important room in the palace. 

Two soldiers whose picture I wasn't supposed to take. 

One of the many rooms in the Forbidden City 

A giant caldron we rubbed for good luck. 

Tiananmen Square. I asked our guide where the iconic pictures were taken of the man and the tanks, but he wouldn't answer. 

All these people were waiting for the lowering of the flag. They still had about 2 hours. 

 

And of course, the kids. 

In the late afternoon we were taken to a gorgeous motel. A few of us went to a place Big Chi recommended for dinner. That was amazing. It was a good thing they had pictures on the menus so we could point to what we wanted to eat, because no one in the place, but us, spoke English. After dinner two of the people walked a few blocks to a night market, but since we had already walked 7 miles that day, Rich and I begged off. 

I won't add on to this blog with what happened the next day. I'll save that for another blog.