Leaving Jack Behind

The day after The Great Wall we decided to take it easy. We spent the morning writing our blog and in the afternoon we strolled through Wangfujing road, the famous shopping street of Beijing. We visited the night market where we actually found people selling dog meat stews (!), nashed (yes, it’s a word! it means ‘snacking’, but I’m pretty sure you all know that already..) some kebabs and went back. We stayed at the hostel that night, where we talked with Michelle and met a friendly British guy (Peter, was it?), who was flying to Korea the next day to re-unite with his Korean girlfriend.

The following day we decided to visit the Summer Palace. We heard several travelers saying that this was one of the highlights of Beijing, so we didn’t want to miss it. We took the subway to Beigongmen Station (line 4) and after a short walk, we got to the palace. We paid 20元 per ticket, which was a bit mysterious considering we were pretty sure the entrance fee was supposed to be 50元, but we didn’t ask (stupid) questions and went in.

The palace was quite impressive. We climbed all the way up and took in the view. The palace consisted of all kinds of small pagodas, hidden walkways and pretty gates and we enjoyed getting lost for a while. After the palace we went on searching for the palace gardens, which were supposed to be even more impressive than the palace itself. Strangely enough though – we couldn’t find them! We think that maybe they were all covered in snow and ice and that’s why we didn’t recognize them. Still a bit weird though.. We did walk in to some nice statues while searching for the gardens.

The sun was already setting and we decided to head back to the hostel before it would get too cold. We jumped on the subway and after a 40 minute ride or so, we were back in Sanlitun District. We looked at the menus of a few restaurants on the way to the hostel, but we soon realized again that we’d better eat at ‘home’ because of the relatively high prices.

Once back at the hostel we decided to spoil ourselves and Ohad, which was recommended by a fellow traveler as his ‘best steak in China’ during his 5 months of travel, ordered the steak. Big mistake (mis-steak?). Note to self: never order a steak in China . The steak was extremely thin and more than well-done (even though the cook found it to be ‘medium’), and they covered it with some super salty sauce that was so spicy that you hardly taste the meat at all. Oh well, guess we’ll have to wait for New Zealand to have some decent steaks..

In the evening we Skyped our last Chinese conversation to Holland and Israel, and packed our bags for the next day. It’s hard to believe we’re leaving China tomorrow and flying to a different continent. It feels like we’ll be flying to a different world..
We can hardly wait

C.