Josh, Liz and I planned to meet Morgan at 9am at the Forbidden City. We took the subway in the wrong direction, but only went one stop before we realized it and got off to take a different train. It took us about 45 minutes, thought it probably should have taken much less. We found Morgan in front of the Hall of the People with a guy named Jack who he met in his hostel. Jack was spending the semester in China, but this was his first time in Beijing.
We went into the building, which we thought was the Forbidden City, and bought snacks immediately. It turns out we were in the gardens next to the Forbidden City and not actually the Forbidden City. We walked around for a while taking pictures of flowers, buildings and other random things. Morgan stopped to call his Dad for his birthday and the rest of us went on walking. There were bumper cars and they were painting in red, white, and blue with the Statue of Liberty on them. That seemed a little weird.
We figured Morgan should be finished with his phone call by now, but we couldn’t find him anywhere. We walked around looking for him, we split up and went in four different directions for a while and we even sat on one spot for ten minutes waiting for him to walk past. It was like the ultimate never ending game of Where’s Waldo. So somehow we lost Morgan in Beijing. He liked to travel by himself anyway so we didn’t worry about it too much. So we decided to go for lunch! We went to a Chinese restaurant just down the street from the Forbidden City, which was a really good place. We couldn’t read anything on the menu, but Jack suggested a few things, so I got one of the things he said was good.
After lunch Jack had to take off and go to the tailor’s, so we said goodbye and Liz, Josh, and I decided to walk around the shopping areas for a while. Our train didn’t leave for a few more hours, so we had lots of time. I bought a few things, including a bag of Chinese candy which I am eating while typing this. I am not a fan.
One thing that was interesting that I saw while walking around was the public toilets. They were around nearly every corner. It was just a building with a bunch of hole in the ground, separated by walls on the sides, but no doors. They seemed pretty awkward to me, but not to the locals.
Anyway, enough about the toilets. There seemed to be some kind of festival being set up in one of the main shopping places. We had to leave before it started, but it looked pretty cool. The streets had lanterns hanging above them, there were giant blow ups of cartoon people, and there were a lot of people walking around. After walking around there for a while we took the subway to the train station. We had a bit of a wait before boarding the train, so we stopped at a drink place and ordered some Chocolate Milk Tea… It really just tasted like hot chocolate.
The train car was much nicer than we had expected. We thought we were going to have to sit up all night, but instead we shared a sleeper car with three other people. There were four beds on the train. One of the guys who did not speak English got one of the top bunks to himself and I got the other. Josh and Liz still have not let it go that I got my own bed and they probably won’t for a while.
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