Arrival in Beijing, Tiananmen Square, Wangfujing Snack Street

Thursday, July 26th
Beijing, China

I am sad to leave Xi’an, I really enjoyed the city and would love to spend some more time here exploring, however I am very excited to head to Beijing.

Fortunately, our flight was only delayed slightly and there was no rain when we arrived. Beijing suffered torrential downpours last weekend and flooding in many areas, however it seems as though downtown Beijing was spared from major damage. Hopefully, the rain stays away for our time here. It was overcast here today, but I’ll take that any day over rain!

Our hotel is in a great location. We are next door to the Forbidden City and extremely close to Tiananmen Square. Once we checked in, we decided to explore our neighborhood and check out Tiananmen Square. As a history and government teacher, I am so excited to be here to all see all the sites in Beijing. We walked over to the Square and wanted to enter the Gate of Heavenly Peace which is where the portrait of Mao sits at one of the end square but it had already closed for the day. There were throngs of people in the Square and by the Gate. We are planning on making a day of the Square, Gate and the Forbidden City on Saturday so we headed to dinner and more exploring.

Gate of Heavenly Peace

View of Tiananmen Square from the Gate of Heavenly Peace

Before dinner we ran into the Donghuamen Night Market, which was very much like the night markets we encountered in Taiwan, with tons of food vendors and souvenirs. We had an average dinner, but ran into Wangfujing Snack Street on our walk home. I wish we would have just come here for dinner but I really just wanted to sit down. I wanted to try their steamed buns and dumplings, but had just eaten so I opted for fried ice cream for dessert instead. There were the usual food market items, plus spiders, cicada, starfish and scorpions kebabs! Don’t worry I will head back there before we leave, but not for the insect kebabs!

Scorpions!

Fried Ice Cream

We had a great evening exploring our new neighborhood. Tomorrow we head to the Great Wall for a day-long hike with a tour guide.