Conquering the Wall
Last weekend was amazing. I had the privilege of taking the bullet train or as the Chinese would call it, the Gao tie, to Beijing. Beijing was a spectacular city despite all of the negative things you may here about the pollution there. The pollution can be bad in Beijing, however we miraculously chose a very breathable time to go. Once we arrived at our hotel we were starving and in the mood for some Beijing duck. The roast duck is famous dish that is one of Beijing’s signature delicacies. We had reservations at the Duck De Chine, which is a well know roast duck spot. Unfortunately due to poor taxi communication we took a longer than expected to time to reach are destination. Perhaps it was a blessing in disguise because right next to Duck De Chine was a spectacular little boutique brewery. The best part was Duck De Chine was nice enough to make us a reservation for the following night. We called it an early night, because in the morning we had to make our way to the Great Wall. What an incredible sight, the wall was huge! It stretched over a massive 5000 miles. We were at the basin of the mountain and managed to hop a ride on ski lift up to the top of the wall area. We walked the wall and took in all the magnificent sights. Once we were done exploring, we ventured out to an area where we were able to toboggan down the mountainside of the wall. The toboggan was a great way to take in all the nature! Later than night, before our duck feast, we managed to find a small street were they sold very obscure street food. Some of the more weird treats included snake, starfish, scorpion, seahorse, and variety of bugs. It wouldn’t be right to leave this place without trying at least one weird item, so I decided to go with the fried scorpion. It was quite delicious a little crunchy and tasted just like shrimp. The following days we made our way back to Shanghai. I hope I will be able to visit Beijing again!