China #1: Arrival + Tiananmen Square + Zhongshan Park

So begins my series of posts about my trip to Beijing!! It was a really fun trip and it was really nice just being a tourist again. The last two countries I've been to (before China) have been for living, so this is the first time in a while that I've just been a tourist! It was nice! Alright, here goes:


Warning: I'm going to include some details that may not interest you, but just in case some comes to get info off my site, I want to give as much as I can.

DAY 1:

Our trip began on Wednesday night after Kami and I got off of work. We took the bus from Tongyeong to Seoul and ended up getting there around 3am. We were pretty tired, but excited too. Then we took a taxi from Seoul to the airport and arrived to the airport before most of the workers. We were zonked and then the news that our flight had been delayed did not help. We were supposed to depart at 8:10am and it was pushed back to 2:00pm due to weather in Beijing. Our first thoughts were ones of exhaustion. We figured we'd need to find a bench at the airport and plant ourselves there for 6 hours. Little did we know, that wouldn't be the case. If you ever get the chance to fly China Southern Airlines, I definitely recommend it. Once we found out our flight was delayed, we were informed that we'd be bussed to a hotel where we could rest before our flight. We were quite shocked. Can you imagine this happening at home? I can't! So it ended up that we were able to nap comfortably in a nice hotel for a few hours before we departed for Beijing. It was a nice surprise since we were so tired from our midnight trip to Seoul.


Anyways, we finally departed, feeling rested and excited. We arrived to Beijing within just a few hours and just prayed we wouldn't have to be quarantined. Since all of the Swine Flu stuff, China makes sure you're quite healthy before entering their country. We both passed and finally stepped foot into China!

And where was our first stop...you guessed it!! Starbucks!! Yummy!

When we arrived in Beijing, it was raining quite hard so we were a bit worried that it would be like that for our whole trip. Thankfully, it wasn't! After we got to our hotel, we went looking for a place to get some dinner. And what is your guess for that?? McDonald's of course! Please don't think we were just being typical American tourists that only go to American places...we actually don't have Starbucks or McDonald's in our South Korean town. Anywho, after a delicious meal, we headed back to our hotel to prepare for the next day of being tourists!

DAY 2:

Our second day in Beijing was a busy one! Our first tourist stop was Tiananmen Square. Some of you may know about this, but I didn't know much before I went. I still don't know too much...except for what my guide book and Kami told me. The guidebook called it the "center of Communism"...and Kami told me about a protest against Communism that took place there in the 1980's. I gathered from both sources that lots of history took place in Tiananmen Square. Essentially, this was a huge square packed with tons of people. There was a memorial building you could go into but we chose not to since the line was insanely long. We did take some pictures though...of course! Here are a few:

After walking around the square, we headed over to the Forbidden City...which is just across the street. Before entering the Forbidden City, we walked through Zhongshan Park. It was quite a pretty place. Here are some pics:
Ok that is all for this post. More to come!!