I arrived in 30 C of Beijing's afternoon heat. After meeting Eric in the Vancouver airport, we got our arranged ride to the hotel.Eric is on the same tour as me and we met on Gaps travel blog; just happen to be on the same flight.

First impressions... very clean although the air smells mildly of car exhuast. Lots of high rise buildings from all eras, some interesting artictecture. We decided to wander around to get acustomed to the time change and ended up at the forbidden city just around the time thousands were leaving for the day. We obivioulsy missed some big feast, hopefully its not like this every day. We still managed to walk around for awhile. Took some pictures hopefully will have time to upload. We also wandered through the night food market on the way back to the hotel...yes, just like on TV you can buy scropian, squid, star fish, silk worms and other goodies on sticks. Yum.. we opted for a hotel sandwhich, our first unimpressive china meal.

Its 8:00 in the morning, had a decent sleep or so I thought. I managed to not get the kettle going for my Starbuck coffee but I did manage to screw up the safe and have the alarm go off at 7:00 am..way to go Maria.

Its been a long day. Eric & I meet Maura from Ireland in the lobby this morning and ended up spending the day together. we took the subway to Temple of Heaven. It was an interesting experience. The subway was very clean and fully automated as far as buying tickets and going throw the gates. Our train came within mins. but was packed to the rafters, no worries, there is always more room to squeeze in..good thing we showered. We spent the day exploring the Temple of Heaven in the heat of the day. It was beautiful as you can see by the pictures. We ended up walking to Tinanmen square and forbidden palace - its a holiday here so everyting is farily busy. The further we got into the palace the denser the people. Eric left, had enough as we had not eaten since early morning and it was 2:00 - Maura and I continued - stopping for an ice tea and a chance to people watch. My turn as I had enough stares from my open toed sandles up to my head - I figure it was in appropriate to wear open toe sandles as only 2 Chinese women I saw had them. Most women, or young women wear ballet shoes or high heals and short shorts with leggins or tights..Maura said they would be hookers in Ireland, in Cda as well I would think. We made it to the top of this hill for awesome shots of the city.

Walk back to the hotel, my feet are plistered and killing me. Met Lizzie and Rosa from England, walked to starbucks for an overpriced drink then back to the hotel to meet the rest of the group. we have quite the multi-country group. Our guide, Andy, took us to a local chinese restaurant for some awesome food. its late and time for bed. Tomorrow we are leaving for the Great Wall...more walking.

So we are off, another day's adventurue .. yeah!

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Maria