My Name is JIN YEONG.: Beijing (pt. 1)

I'm back from "spring break" in Beijing! We went for 4 nights and 5 days which ended up being the perfect amount of time to see all the sights. I went with my friend Tony again, but we were able to meet up with 2 other friends who live in Seoul for the first 2 days.

On the first day, we arrived around 10am (only a 2 hour, rather turbulent ride from Seoul) and took the subway into the city. We ended up spotting our friends on the escalator leaving the subway at the station our hostel was located at. We dropped our stuff at Happy Dragon Hostel and headed out in search of lunch and the Summer Palace. After Summer Palace, we went to the famous Silk Market which is not at all what it sounds like. It's basically an underground market full of fake brand names (bargaining mandatory). It was quite the experience. I have no pictures of the market, probably because the merchants were too busy calling out to us and grabbing our limbs to "come and look" at their stuff. I ended up buying only 1 thing there, a fake Longchamp bag (because of course I need another one of these) for about $20. In retropspect, I probably should have bought some more stuff, but it was only the first day so I didn't know what to expect!

Day 2, we went to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall of China (much anticipated part of the trip!). We booked the tour through the hostel despite advice to go on our own. A bus took us there and back and it paid for our breakfast and lunch as well. We spent about 3 hours on the wall trekking up and down step upon step. Nobody ever talks about the pure physical exhaustion that comes along with the Wall. It was an amazing experience to to be on it though. We took a cable car up, and after climbing, we took a toboggan down! We were also really lucky because there weren't very many tourists there at all. I think because it's winter, not many people want to come visit China (except us!). The weather was really nice too. I was expecting it to be bitter cold and windy, but especially after climbing a bit, it was quite comfortable and sunny.