Beijing — Day 2 (Part 2)

After riding the bus back from The Wall, we took the subway out to see some of the buildings from the 2008 Olympics. The subways were usually standing room only, except for the line that went to the Olympic area. It was built just for the Olympics and was pretty much empty when we rode it.

Before getting into the Olympic area we had to go through security. When we picked up our camera bags and such from the X-Ray machine, we saw that the guy monitoring the security screening was asleep! We felt very secure as we headed into the Olympic Green!

The Bird’s Nest: 

The “Green” which was mostly. not. green. It was large! Just more concrete color. I suppose “The Olympic Concrete” doesn’t flow as well.  

The Cube: (Home to the swimming events.) 

The Ling Long Pagoda  broadcast tower. 

A picture of me … taking a picture of Craig … who was completely copying a pose a girl was making on the other side of The Green. (Have I mentioned some Chinese people make funny poses for pictures? Well, they do sometimes.)

And a better view of Craig. Here’s the picture I was taking. Those crazy Americans!  

There was quite a bit of artwork on The Green, but apparently I only took pictures of the human artwork above.

We then took the subway back to meet up with Nicki. On the way, we noticed a temple listed on the subway maps. It was one of the stops, so we decided to check it out. Each subway stop had multiple exits, and had we taken the one closest to the temple, we probably could have gotten in. Unfortunately, we wandered around like lost tourists for a few minutes and got to the temple entrance just after it closed.

We were always amazed at the number of people using the subways. Here’s a photo from underground. I think this was a hallway to transfer to a different line. It’s probably not the best photo, but it’s pretty much solid people everywhere you go.

We got back to our hotel, met up with Nicki and went looking for a Hutong. We passed an area we had seen before, only now it was all lit up for the evening.

A Hutong is a traditional neighborhood with many homes all hooked together and small walkways and alleys between them.

We wondered if this was up to code?

This was a fancy motor bike!

The building below is a hostel.

A neighbor left a note for anyone staying at the hostel.

Our next adventure was looking for supper. On the way, we passed this bike. Not a great picture because it was getting dark, but a very common sight in China.

We headed back to Wangfujing Street, the walking street that reminds me of Time Square in New York.

We ended up eating at Subway in a mall. If you ever go to a Subway in China, Ben does not recommend the meatball sub. He took one bite and ordered another sandwich. We also got Blizzards at Dairy Queen. So, on the day we hiked on The Great Wall, we ate only Western food.