On July 2nd, we explored around town during the day and didn't find a whole lot of things. That evening, however, we decided to go back to the Olympic Stadium because the last time we went, we lest before we could see everything lit up. The Stadium definitely had a different feeling during the night and it was very pretty!
The funniest part of the evening was when PJ and I were trying to get a picture of the Water Cuba lit up with a bunch of different colors, like you see on all the official Beijing Olympic pictures (see below). However, the Water Cube changes colors throughout the night and it seemed to repeat every 30 minutes or so. So we were waiting for the Water Cube to change colors to the one we wanted and then some Chinese people came up to us asking for our picture (not an uncommon occurrence). As soon as they came up to us, the Water Cube changed colors and we were trying to tell the people that we had been waiting for 15 minutes and had to get a picture! I don't think they entirely understood, but we got a couple of pictures and the Chinese tourist got a picture with us, so all ended well!
The next day (Sunday, July 3rd), a couple of us went to the Beijing Zoo. After wandering around to find the zoo (which you wouldn't think would be that hard, but it was...), we finally found it and the first area we went to was the pandas! It wasn't a huge surprise, but all but one of the pandas were sleeping....and the other was eating bamboo. They were still very cool to see.
They also had an area with red pandas, which are a lot smaller than the Giant Pandas (shocker, I know), but still cute.
After seeing the pandas, we explored the rest of the zoo. Although the panda area of the zoo was large enough for the animals and well kempt, the rest of the zoo was almost the complete opposite. Many of the animals were in really small cages that were dirty and filled with litter. We figured it was like this because of the limited amount of space in Beijing and because the entrance ticket was only 15 RMB = less than $2.50 (seeing the pandas was extra).
Last Saturday (July 9th), I went to a couple of small places a few metro stops away: the 5-Pagoda Temple and the Purple Bamboo Garden. The 5-Pagoda Temple (Zhenjue Temple) was a smaller, Buddhist Temple built in an Indian style, as opposed to the traditional Chinese style. It was a very quite place to walk around and explore because it's not a traditional "tourist destination" in Beijing.
Around the temple, there was also a museum of stone carvings, which included a lot of large statues and old tomb-stones, including a bunch from Jesuits, which was slightly surprising.
After seeing the Temple, we wandered around the Purple Bamboo Park, which was a short walk away.
The park was very pretty and, once again, was not a tourist place; there were just a bunch of locals walking around, taking pictures, practicing tae kwon do, and more.
Finally, on Sunday (July 10th), one of PJ's friends who is currently working in Tianjin (30 minute train ride away) was visiting for the weekend so we went around with him for the day. I also found a place at the Pearl Market to buy cheap, but very good quality, knock-off Coach bags, so you can believe I'll be bringing a few of those home with me!
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