August 23-24, 2009 – Day 242-243 – Beijing, China

Yesterday was a boring day for posting. Only exciting thing to happen was that we discovered we had bought tickets for the soft sleeper bullet train to Beijing despite our numerous pleas for “hard sleeper.” Granted it was a really, really nice train and it got us to Beijing in only 10 speedy hours.

Ahh now thats more like it

On the downside, our wallets were smouldering painfully after purchasing the incorrect tickets from a teller who spoke English just fine one moment and then didn’t at all when it came time to shell out the cash. Funny how that works…

Look how clean it is!

So today (the 24th) was spent exploring the neighborhood around our hostel (which turns out to be more hotel than hostel; nice but not fun). Having not eaten all day and being drawn in each passing moment by the wafting smell of roasted duck, we treated ourselves to a “fine dining experience.”

Fancy spread

Turns out, Beijing duck smells a bit better than it tastes. It was not bad, just not overly fantastic and was quite fatty. Still, it was definitely worth a try! A spot of shopping led us through a new but unfinished wide boulevard with tall grey, stone buildings containing mostly clothing shops along either side. Down the center ran two sets of trolley tracks for the occasional trolley sighting which sent many Chinese tourists into a photo frenzy.