Beijing, Day 2 (Tuesday, July 26, 2011)

The Dumplings were down stairs having breakfast with the early risers on Tuesday, July 26, in order to be at the bus by 9 am.  This was our Great Wall day!  We had about an hour ride on the bus to the Great Wall outside Beijing, but first, a stop at the Jade factory.

Back in 2006, I bought jade bangles for the girls and me.  Mine still fits but the girls' have outgrown theirs. I brought the bracelets, hoping to exchange them for larger ones.  The girls had other plans.  They decided that they did not want larger bracelets, they wanted to keep the baby ones.  So, I packed them back up in my backpack and carried them all over China.

Once we got to the Great Wall, the sun was out and it was hot!  We climbed up to the first station and the girls decided that they did not want to go further.   There were vendors everywhere on the wall!  You could buy t-shirts, chops, cards, postcards, hats, almost anything.  There was a small strip mall at the bottom of the wall with food, drinks, ice cream, coffee, etc.  The place was jam packed with tourists.  We took some photos from the wall and then went back down to hang out with some of the other Dumpling families at the coffee shop (diet Coke/Coke Light/Coke Zero stop).  Two of the families ended up going to the 5th station of the wall.  I can't imagine how hard that climb was!  Sarah learned Chinese finger painting from one of the vendor artists at the Wall.

After the climbers got back to the bus, we took off for the Cloisonne Factory and lunch!  At this point, we discovered that the green vegetables that we thought were either asparagus pieces, green beens or green onions were actually garlic sprouts!  Delicious!  We had them 2 days in a row, basically prepared the same way, cut in small pieces and sauteed.

We bought a few goodies at the Cloisonne factory, then, instead of our getting to go back to the hotel to rest, we were taken directly back to Beijing, to tour the Olympic venues.  The Birdnest, Swimming pavilion and the torch area were on our tour.  There were vendors EVERYWHERE, selling watches, t-shirts, kites, Olympic souvenirs, etc.  We ended up buying a kite even though we were told to ignore the vendors and tell them we were Russian!  I couldn't help but laugh when the vendors came up with outrageous stuff for us to buy!  They had fake glasses and mustaches with streamers that shot out of the mustache.  Naturally, the girls wanted one.  I just could not go there.

After the Olympic sites, we got back on the bus and were taken to dinner at a Hot Pot restaurant.  What a disaster!  First of all, it was already HOT!  We were all hot, tired, sweaty and ready for a swim.  We got delivered to the traditional Hot Pot restaurant where at each room, there was a huge family sized table with a hot, steaming pot of broth on a burner at each place setting!  So, basically, 10 burners with 10 pots of steaming broth in a very small area.  It must have been over 120 degrees in that room.  It was just about unbearable.  There was an attempt at cooling - an air conditioner standing behind the table, however, it could make no dent in the heat in the room!  We were instructed to take pieces of the food that would be placed in the center of the table and drop it into the pot to cook; then take it out and eat it.  OK.  They started with very thin slices of beef and chicken.  It had no flavor at all.  It would cook to a gray color, then we were supposed to eat it.  Not very appealing at all.  The girls just looked at it!  Then they came around with what turned out to be shrimp paste balls.  Those were better than the meats but still, not much flavor.  At some point, they brought out potatoes, sliced very thinly, which the girls did like.  However, it took much longer to cook the potatoes than the meats, so they had to sit there and wait for the potatoes to cook before they could/would eat anything.  We got some fresh noodles, at least 2 different kinds, to cook.  Finally, because none of the children were eating anything, they brought out some french fries!  Those disappeared almost immediately!  We tried to end the dinner as quickly as possible so that we could get back to the hotel and cool off.