Day8

Day8 free day in Beijing
Back to the tour

Today was a free day and to be honest we were exhausted so we decided to concentrate on finding ways of getting to Xi'an, pronounced 'sheean', to see the Terracotta Warriors. We had a taxi to Tiananmen Square and spent some time there watching the world go by. The road between the Forbidden City and the top of Tiananmen Square is enormous with at least eight lanes of traffic in addition to the widest cycle lanes we have ever seen. In the centre of the junction was a police officer directing traffic. His job had obviously got the better of him and his traffic direction was almost a dance with exaggerated arm and leg movements. He reminded us of Michael Jackson. I don't really know why but perhaps that's a measure of how tired we are.

We left Tiananmen Square and travelled by taxi to Beijing Railway Station. We had heard that this was a large, fairly spectacular building and were impressed when we found it, even though it was shrouded in scaffolding and surrounded by hundreds of Chinese people sat on the pavements outside. The weather was extremely hot and together with another of our colleagues, Clare, we sought the International counter where we hoped to book tickets to Xi'an. It was about 40 minutes later, having walked the length of the station that we found anyone who could speak any English. Our Chinese was limited to hello so there were no meaningful conversations, but we eventually established that we were at the wrong railway station and could not purchase our tickets here. We travelled to Beijing West Railway Station, again by taxi, and realised why we had heard it was impressive! It has to be one of the largest stations in the world and reportedly has the most platform space in the world. It is a new building and is enormous. Inside we found our International counter and finally booked three tickets to Xi'an. We were travelling approx. 1200kms and the cost of the train ticket was about Ł25. The whole process had taken most of the day, we were shattered, and after a short walk through a Hutong we returned to the Qianmen Hotel, our sanctuary


The narrow lanes that form the Hutongs are amazing with a vast range of food and other products on sale. Everyone took much notice of us as we walked through. It's not a place to be at night even though during the day we were always welcomed. In reality they were probably looking at us and laughing at our 'strangeness'. The rest of the day was spent at the hotel or in a cafe/bar nearby planning our trip to Xi'an and contemplating the thirteen hour train journey!

Back to the tour