Just back from visiting the Imperial Summer Palace in the far northwest of Beijing. We found a great Internet Café in the university area (i.e. smokeless, XP English version with usb port, although the keyboard letters are all rubbed out!).

On Monday, we changed hotels from a 2-stars to another 2-stars … but with much better stars. We bought plane tickets for our segment of Beijing/Xian/Shanghai and we just walked around the area to get practice on crossing the streets without getting run over by taxi, bus or cyclists. It’s fun….

On Tuesday, we awoke at 5am thinking our jet lag was cured, but not quite. By 7am we were having breakfast at the hotel and shortly after we went to visit the famous Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City (Imperial Palace) and Jingshan and Beihai parks. Although we spent only a few hours at each site, we really could have spent a few days at each. We really enjoyed our visit of both Jingshan and Beihai parks. The trip back to hotel was done on a moto-taxi. Our first attempt at negotiating a moto-taxi proved difficult on my ego. A driver eager to share the fare with another driver, suggested that I was too big to ride with Jenny and Victoria and I would need to hop another moto-taxi. We finally found a moto-taxi that thought I was acceptable. Back at the hotel, we slept for a few hours. In the evening, we went exploring for a restaurant close by.

Today, Wednesday, we realized we were not cure of our jet lag as we all woke up at 3am. We blew a balloon up and started to play in the hotel room and did some more trip planning in the mean time. We finally fell asleep for a few more hours. After the typical breakfast at the hotel, we took the subway and local bus to the Imperial Summer Palace. Again we could have spent a few days visiting this site, but we limited ourselves to a few hours. The local transportation experience is great.

We have certainly been walking a lot…. Victoria has surprised us both as she is walking it all.