Day 2 in Beijing
Our second day in Beijing was filled with walking and sightseeing! We got up early and walked to this little café on the corner called Coffee and Waffles, and grabbed a green tea latte. It was….interesting! I’ve never had one before, and while this tasted pretty OK, the flavor just wasn’t my taste.
After coffee, we walked to Tiananmen Square and started making our way through the HUGE crowd of people! I kid you not, there were soooo many people there! We had to go through a security check on our way in, and it was so funny cause every kept staring at us lol I don’t think they often see a tall skinny white girl accompanied by a black guy with crazy curly hair! A bunch of Asian tourists wanted to take pictures with us all day too.
Tiananmen Square was really cool and huge. I was amazed at the sheer size of it, which I should have known would be large as it’s the largest square in China! From Tiananmen Square we were able to start our tour of The Forbidden City, which is the Imperial Palace that the Royal Family used to live in. It’s so big, that it took us about 3 hours to go through the whole thing. I think my favorite part of it was the Gardens at the end, they were very beautiful!
After we finished with The Forbidden City, we accidentally ended up in one of the Hutong areas. Hutongs are small and narrow pedestrian street with tons and tons of street food and little shops, and lots of tourists. It was a really cool site to see, and we just decided to walk down the Hutong and slowly make our way back to our apartment for a little nap.
That night, we decided we wanted to try one of the most famous dishes in Beijing, the Peking Duck. This is a specialty of Beijing, and we can totally see why, cause it was soooo good! I’ve only had duck once before on a salad, but this was straight up roasted duck. It was delicious. The restaurant we ate at was in another Hutong area of Beijing and is actually a pretty famous restaurant. We had a pretty long wait, so I definitely recommend making a reservation in advance or going early! The restaurant is called the Qianmen Quanjude Original Roast Duck Restaurant, and you ever get to Beijing, you MUST check it out!
After dinner, we did a little shopping around the Hutongs, then headed back to the apartment for the night. We were still so jet lagged, that we were in bed by 11:30pm!
xo,
B
EXCITING ITINERARY!!!