China - Day 4

It's been a long time coming, but finally China day 4 is hitting the blog!! :)

Between jetlag and excitement sleeping on the train for me was close to impossible. I kept waking up thinking, are we in Beijing yet?!? I finally got up around 4am and just looked out the window until the other girls woke up. It was dark but I could still make out some of the features of the landscape. I was surprised how many cars were on roads and lights on in homes that we passed. Finally the sun came up and I could see all the features of the landscape passing out window. Mostly we passed fields and small towns. I remember one thing that struck me as odd - I kept seeing sunflower fields. I'm not sure why there was so many but they were very beautiful on the otherwise drab landscape.

After everyone woke up we visited the tiny bathrooms on the train and got dressed for arrival at the train station. Once we arrived in Beijing and exited the train, we were inside a huge train station. We walked and walked before we finally found the exit. Oh my was it cold! It had rained the night before and that combined with our travel north, had resulted in shockingly colder temps. We scurried around trying to find an English speaking Chinese person to write down the name of our hostel in Chinese Characters to show to the cab driver. Finally Tiffany found an English speaking train ticket line and the clerk was able to do that for us. Into the taxi line we went!! It was an interesting line....the cabbies were let into the cab area by the flag man in waves. Once the cabs stopped they let groups of people from the line out all at the same time to get a cab. Kinda like musical chairs with cabs. Needless to say if this was a game we lost. Every cab that we started to get into said no when we showed them where we wanted to go. We must have gone through three waves of cabs, all without someone willing to take us. We were tired, cold, and really wanted a shower. Playing musical taxi cab was the last thing we wanted to be doing. Finally we spotted a hostel across the street from the train station and decided to go over there to see if they could help us. They were able to give us a book of area hostels that had a page for our hostel and a map. Finally with the use of the map we were able to hail a cab and made it to our hostel.

Tiffany, Carissa, and Sarah at the train station



Now, let me preface this by saying I've never stayed in a hostel before. I'm not exactly a hostel kinda girl. I really like nice hotels and yes, I'll admit it, I'm a little high maintenance, so I was really weary about staying in a hostel. We checked into the hostel and found out that we were staying in their "West Yard." A teenage boy and a man on a bike (with our luggage on a cart attached to it) walked us over to the west yard. Once we arrived the west yard was nice and I was glad to be there. The teenage boy was named Scott and he was very nice! He looked at our map with us and gave us tips on how to get to different sites we wanted to see. After we showered and changed into clean clothes, we headed out to the Summer Palace.

The entrance to our hostel


Group shot


Scott helping us with the map


Entrance to the courtyard where our room was



The Summer Palace is just that, a palace where the Imperial Court of old China liked to stay during the summer. It is often associated with the only Empress of China CiXi who made the Palace her home year round for much of her reign. CiXi is also referred to as the Empress Dowager and gained this title when her son became Emperor but was too young to rein. She ruled China for years from behind a screen. I remember studying her in college so I was so excited to see the place she once called home. The Summer Palace was amazing! It is a huge area surrounding a lake. I took lots of photos, so here's a bunch!