Beijing

It was the best night train ever on the way into Beijing. 
1) They have to jack the train and put it on new wheels at the border.
2) We had been meeting people on tours and hostels so already had our train friends lined up, then the next door couple came and recruited us.
3) I'm being actively interested in my messenger conversations lately.
4) World's coolest couple started an absinthe party in the dining car.  He's a documentary filmmaker who specializes in trains.  She runs an absinthe museum.  Party started. 

So it was this orgy of stimulation with cool stuff happening on all sides of me. 

We rolled into Beijing in the morning into cutest little guesthouse ever featuring super sweet 5 star concierge man. 

In Beijing I was most interested in the art, which was pretty disappointing.  I mean pretty amateur stuff which surprised me because I thought the traveling exhibitions featuring contemporary Chinese work were really great. 

That was one of our days but we discovered some awesome little areas.  First there's like every little street.

There are so many streets you couldn't take a car down.  The answer?  Everyone has a little modded out scooter with like a tiny car body built around it to varying levels of professionalism.  Jes thought they were all art cars waiting to happen and some of them seriously an led light string away from seeing them at a festival. 

We hung out in Tienanmen twice on one day, seeing the flag lowering ceremony.  It was weird to see it as a place unhinged from all I know of it. 

We also did the summer palace, the temple of heaven and the forbidden city, as well as jinshein park.  The park and the summer palace both have high manmade hills to climb up with views of the city. 

All the buildings are very splendid old Beijing, lots of fitted wood no nail construction with beautifully refreshed paint jobs.  Similar kind of Buddhist construction to a lot of southeast Asian temples, but different decorative elements. 

There's a million locals at a lot of these sights which is cool.  Summer palace had marble boats and ferries to an island in the water and big lovely palaces in the middle and the hill to climb and you could look out over the skiffs on the water. 

Our favorite restaurant district was also around a pond thing which had waist high water lilies in it and people would swim (gross!) and boat and people really fly kites.  Little kites and grown people. 

It was really lovely and there was a lot of nonstop wandering around and looking at stuff.