Visualized Heaven: 中国 Middle Kingdom

When a sudden burst of inspiration comes upon you, then you really need to follow it. Follow your heart! My decision was influenced by my own lovely personal guide for China, whom made it one of the most unforgettable trip of my life.

中国 is China in characters, the first character means middle and the second Kingdom.

16.8.2011

My flight left around 17:00 for Frankfurt, where I arrived 2 hours and 35 minutes later. Then I was in a hurry to find the other terminal and gate, which were far apart. And to top this all, I had to get a transfer ticket. Sounds easy right, well not when there is no guidance about it. Well after a lot of walking, I got my ticket and found the gate for my long flight to Beijing, China.

17.8.2011

The plane landed around 11:35 like it was supposed to but for some reason we were stuck for some while, before we could get out of the plane. Then waiting in line for passport and visa check after which thought I would just pick up my stuff, but I had to take a train to that part of the terminal. Got my bag and then headed to find my lovely guide. The part of the Beijing airport I was in was quite new and really clear to follow.

Easy way to get out of the airport, use the airport express. After that find the subway line that is nearest to your hotel. A good thing to remember with traveling with the subway is to remember to save the ticket since you will need to return it at the end or you will have to purchase another ticket. Ours was Heipinglibeilu. It was on a well known snack street called ghost street. Great location to get good spicy food, too bad for me that in most places’s the food was too spicy. So even though it tasted good, I just couldn't finish it. Why is it also known as Ghost Street? Because back in the day, there were no street lights only the red lanterns which gave it a ghostly feel. On the first day we explored the snack street and even found a shopping center near our hotel, called Raffles City.

Buildings on Ghost Street

KTV, a favorite past time of Chinese people

18.8.2011

On the second day we made our way to a really famous walking street, which had both traditional shops and modern ones. On the walking street there was also a snack street where we got to see some seahorses and scorpions, but we chose to take some caramelized bitter apples, which were so good.

Subway station

The famous walking street and lots of umbrellas..

My mini, almost :)

HOLD ON! Where did everyone go?

Someones favorite ;)

Uhm this doesn't look Chinese!

These are Christmas flowers to me :)

See the scorpions and other treats

Woah, too many people, snack streets are really popular.

The gate to the snack street

Happy child with her candy apples

Watermelons??

Green Tea <3

I have to say one of my favorite things about China is green teas in bottles. My favorite is Jasmine tea with a little honey.

19.8.2011

The day we conquered the Great Wall, or at least one part of it. As we wanted also to see the Ming tombs and coz it turned out to be quite difficult to reach using busses and so on. So we decided to use a local tour guide, which we accidentally found. This turned out to be a good choice since we had seats and an air-conditioned buss to travel in. They also took us to two other places we hadn't planned visiting, but they were interesting as well. First place was about Ming emperors and the other about making Jade.

After these two we made our way to apart of the Great Wall, it wasn’t the most famous one, but it's the steepest one at least in my opinion. The wall wasn't as wide as I thought, but it was beautiful never the less. Though it was really hard to walk up in the heat of the sun. Truly one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

Next up was the Ming tombs, which is a huge area in total. Yet there is only one tomb open for visitors. The area surrounding the tomb is a garden. The tomb itself is quite plain but impressive with its size.

First the Great Wall: