Fw: Beijing

UPDATE -- CANNOT ATTACH PHOTOS 

I hope you enjoyed the pictures. They included all the sites we saw today as well as pictures from our hotel.  We stayed at the Renaissance Hotel by Marriot which is on the northwest side of the city.  We did not have to travel far to hotel from the airport.   

Wow!!  Beijing is so beautiful.  Today we spent the day touring Tiananmen Square, The Forbidden City, The Olympic Village and The Great Wall.  It rained all day which put a damper on the day but at least it was cool.  I have a lot of pictures from today and may have to split this post's pictures into two different posts. 

There were a lot, and I mean a lot, of people touring Tiananmen Sqaure and The Forbidden City today.  It was packed.  Although, if it hadn't been raining, there probably would have been more.  Both places were incredibly impressive and I really don't have any words to describe them.  The history and reverence both commanded was incredible.

The Olympic Village was really cool as well.  We weren't allowed to tour inside The Bird's Nest and Water Cube but we spent about forty-five minutes checking out the outside park.

The Great Wall was so cool!!!!!!!!!!!!  Scott and JD walked a good section of the The Wall.  The stairs ranged anywhere from six inches to eighteen inches tall.  I didn't climb as high as them because my fear of heights returned when I turned around and looked down.  I was also pretty worn out from the thirteen hour flight and getting up at 3:00 a.m. didn't help either.

Lunch was a traditional Chinese style meal.  The food is placed on a lazy susan in the middle of a large table and is served family style.  We had dumplings, rice, broccoli, watermelon, stir fried beef and a few other things I don't remember.  We also toured a cloissone factory today and saw the process for making cloissone.