Beijing: "That was cool list"

Beijing: "That was cool list"



For our 7th anniversary we high tailed it to China now that's what I call getting away from a Royal Wedding, no worries though because we watched it in China with every other visitor.  I even went so far as to wear a shirt with a crown on it that day. Yeah, I know. DORK.

Great Wall of China

Forbidden City

• I do believe the coolest of all was climbing the Mutianyu section (90km north of Beijing) of the Great Wall of China.  It's the same portion of the wall that former President Bill Clinton climbed. Yeah, I'm a fan of Bill Clinton sorry guys. He's a charmer what can I say... Seriously though, I did NOT know this tidbit before arriving at the actual wall. Seriously!  We took a VERY SCARY cable car to the top. This section of the wall is built on the older Qi Dynasty section AD 550-77 and its not as heavily restored as the Badaling section nor is it crowded with tourist. Well it wasn't before I posted this anyways... As they say in the Ridge "Over yonder ways is a place called Mongolia"... (it was to our right when walking so I would have been pointing in that direction when saying it).  I gotta admit this is one of the coolest places my eyes have ever seen and my feet have ever walked.  Great Wall of China? Yeah I've been there (Insert the biggest smile ever here) My arm is finally healing from the bruises from pinching myself to make sure I wasn't dreaming.  
• Forbidden City: Built in 1406.  It's not forbidden.  It's not extremely cool, but cool enough.  It is FREAKING HUGE though. Maybe that's where they got the city part?... 
• My husband planning a secret romantic dinner at Capital M.  The plates even had an "M" on them... psst! if you turn them upside its a "W" (insert giggle here)...my initials... pretty perfect I say.
• Visiting the "Birds Nest" and the "Water Cube" from the 2008 Olympics. Now that was pretty bad ass.  We took a tour and got to check out everything. We even sat in a couple seats.

The Water Cube behind us and my new scarf around my neck. I found it in a cute shop in 798 Art District

Inside the Birds Nest

798 Art District

•  We also really liked this cool area called 798 Art District. It was pretty cool!
• Ghost Market I think is the name of the market with all the crazy food. You can tell the really good places because of the crowds waiting to place an order. The market pretty much never closes from what I hear.  If you've seen the Beijing episode of "An Idiot Abroad" that's the market that Karl is walking through. It's pretty unique.
• We stayed at Hotel G and we thought it was pretty cool. Very trendy. Made us feel young and hip.
• Another cool treat was the Oreo Blizzard from Dairy Queen we devoured at the mall. Man, that was tasty! I need to see if London has a Dairy Queen. Every so often you just need a Blizzard. For real!

Hotel G

These guys outside the Birds Nest just made me happy so I had to get a picture with them. Too cute.

• A lovely little lake district called "Hou Hai" ~ A lot going on here...
• Tian'an Men Square ~ The largest public square in the world
• Wang Fu Jing is a shopping area if you want to buy just about anything

Beijing: Top 10 Weird Things

Beijing: Top 10 Weird Things:

Baby Turtle anyone? No, the answer is simply no.

 
We are home from China and I have so much to share that I don't even know where to begin.  I think I'll start with weird things that happened on the trip.

Scorpions and Sea Horses on a stick. Not your ordinary carnival treat.

1. Every person we saw coughed and spit everywhere! Never covering their mouth. It started on the plane with the guy next to me spitting gobs of stuff in his barf bag as if his life depended on it. I'm sure it was full by the time we landed. Gross.  I was in full force with my antibacterial products that I was packing so much that I could have been recruited into Team 6.  Spit EVERYWHERE.
2. The couple that thought it was ok to change an infant boys diaper on the tray table of their seat with no cover. I immediately found someone that could translate to the flight attendant "PLEASE MAKE SURE THEY NEVER TRY ANYTHING LIKE THAT AGAIN". Take that kind of stuff to the bathroom.
3. Senior citizen tour groups everywhere wearing red hats banning together in a ball and charging through already overcrowded areas.
4. Seeing Marinated Baby Turtle on the menu ~ Who needs to eat a cute turtle?
5. Scorpions on a stick (still moving) at the market
6. Sea horses on a stick at the food market ~ Who needs to eat a sea horse?
7. Our private tour guide to the Great Wall kept ramming his bare finger up his nose digging away so deep that I'm sure there was brain on it when it exited his nose. I was sitting next to him in the front seat. Then after nose digging he'd bite his nails.  It was almost a 2 hour drive of this. So I took a short nap. 
8. The "earth toilets". The smell of urine was unbelievable.  No doors and sometimes no walls. Just 5 or 6 earth toilets in an open room with no toilet paper. I'm not that carefree. I won't even change my shirt in front of my own mother.  I did actually have to finally use one, but mine had walls and a door! Let me just say that it is not easy to use an earth toilet.
9. Public toilets not offering toilet paper. I read this before I left so I was prepared, but actually seeing this come true took some getting use to. Even in the nice malls sometimes there would be no toilet paper not even a place for toilet paper to be.
10. People pushing us or telling us to get out of the way when they were taking pictures.  I can handle the telling, but keep your hands off me.  

Earth toilet

Tour Groups resting from all their unnecessary pushing and steam rolling.

China: Any suggestions?

CHINA: Any suggestions?

I'll start this blog by saying that Mike once said in response to me wanting us to go to Asia, "I never want to go to Asia"....

Now let's begin...

The McCooeys are headed to China (Mike finally came around) for the first time in about a week and are terribly excited! Not only to see China, but I am sure I will starve along the way which will cause me to lose some weight! Yay! Just in time for summer!

If you watch the show "An Idiot Abroad", I'm sure I'll be just like Karl and eat chips aka crisps the majority of the time.  He was forced to eat toad at one point. He didn't like it thought. He also walked through a food market and there were a lot of fried insects on a stick on offer. I'm not sure I ever want to eat a fried scorpion on a stick. Heck, I won't even eat a corn dog on a stick.

We are going to Beijing and Hong Kong to be exact.  So I'm looking for suggestions...

If you've been and would like to tell me about "you must go here" ,"see this", "eat this", or "dont do this" please leave a comment or just email me directly. (Thanks in advance)

By the way, I'm pretty sure we already know about the Great Wall so no need to tell me about it (insert giggle here).

I did read that Hong Kong has a Disneyland and since I've never been to a Disneyland I'm toying with the idea of going. When I say this Mike just looks at me with this weird look... They even have their own Disney Train line just for their Disneyland. How convenient is that?!

By the way, did you know that fortune cookies are not popular there? They aren't according to the Food Network... I will see for myself.

We, of course, do not know any Chinese so I will be making signs and looking up words like: toilet, water, Great Wall, taxi, help, airport, please take me to my hotel, etc...  This would have been very helpful in Thailand.  I did finally start carrying around the word toilet with me which I actually used a couple of times. Hey, when you gotta go you gotta go.

I like to ramble on sometimes... can you tell?