Beijing Day 2

Today was another long day. We started out by walking to Olympic Park and Bird's Nest Stadium, which is only about a mile and a half from our hotel. On the way, we stopped at a bank that is affiliated with Bank of America, our home bank in the US. We are able to use our Bank of America debit cards and PIN numbers at the ATM to pull out cash here in China without any extra fees or international surcharges. We have complete access to our bank accounts in the US and it even accounts for the exchange rate. We just select how ever much Yuan (yu-in) we want to pull out and it automatically takes the dollar equivalent out of our American account. I'm not sure how it works but its very convenient. We also have a "Travel Rewards" credit card from Bank of America which also doesn't have any international fees, but most places here don't accept cards. Cash is still very much the main form of payment here so we will have to get used to always having it with us - something I was admittedly bad about in the states. After the bank and a quick stop at Starbucks (Chelsea was particularly excited about that find), we headed to Olympic Park. They were selling tickets for a tour of the inside of the stadium but we were content with the view from outside and got a good look at everything from just walking around the park.

Next, we wanted to find the train station that we would be leaving Beijing from next week. Like I mentioned yesterday, the taxis can get a little expensive so we wanted to give the subway a try. Other than the fact that the stations can be a little hard to find (even with a  map), this was definitely the way to go. A taxi ride can cost up 100 Yuan one way. The subway, however, is only 2 Yuan each (about 30 cents) for us both to get underground. Once in the network of trains, you can stay on as long as you want and transfer trains as many times as you need to reach your final destination. So we took the subway from Olympic Park to the Beijing South Railway station and walked around a bit, just to get our bearings for when its time to leave Beijing. From there, we paid another 4 Yuan to re-enter the subway system and go back to the Forbidden City. We only explored the courtyard yesterday and wanted to go inside the actual city. We paid 60 Yuan each to enter the city - which seemed expensive since we've gotten used to spending only a few bucks here and there for various items - but in reality, its only about $10 a person. We took about an hour to walk through the city and snapped off some good pictures. By the time we made our way all the way through, we were both exhausted from all the walking around and were ready to head back to the hotel. It was at this point that searching for the subway stations got really annoying. Our map showed a station really close to where we exited the city but we couldn't find it for the life of us. We decided to walk about a mile or so down the road to the next one, but it ended up being several blocks from where the map said it was. We finally found it though and paid our 4 Yuan to get back to Olympic Park, the closest station to our hotel.

By the time we walked back to the hotel, we figured we'd done at least 10 miles on the day and decided to just eat dinner at the hotel restaurant. We ate, came back up to the room, and are already ready for bed at 7:30. I start my class tomorrow so from here on out the exploring will be solely up to Chelsea. Beijing has a ton to offer and its a shame that we only get to spend ten days here. But at the same time, we're both ready to head to Kunshan and get settled in our new home.

Thanks for reading,

Hunter