Forbidden Olympics

On our second day of trying to get into the Olympics, we decided to go straight for the motherload--the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube in the middle of the Olympic village, where most of the events were going on on the last day. We walked around amid throngs of Chinese waiting to go to their events, quietly saying "tickets?" to everyone, and getting mainly quizzical looks and curious smiles in return. We finally ran into a guy asking $900 for a pair of tickets to handball, which was on the other side of the city, but started in just a few minutes. As neither Jessica nor I could really identify what the sport of handball is, we decided to pass on that proposition. We settled instead for a few pictures of the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube from across the freeway that separated the coveted ticket-holders from the envious.

After getting our fill walking around in the sweltering heat outside the Olympic Village, we decided to head to the next hot spot on our list--the Forbidden City. We took the madly crowded subway to the center of town and began exploring this enormous city within a city. After walking around the outer ring of the Forbidden City, we stopped for lunch at a noodle place right through a security checkpoint of some kind. Upon our return to the area we had come from before lunch, the same security guard that we had gesticulated at about the restaurant attempted to charge us $15 each to pass back through the gate. We of course refused and attempted to indicate that we had just been there. After several back and forths, she became frustrated that she wasn't going to win that one, grabbed our tickets, and ripped them to shreds. Shrugging our shoulders, we chalked that one up to the whole "saving face" thing and continued on our way.



We next bought tickets to the actual inner core of the Forbidden City, where we had cool GPS-enabled audio tour guides that spoke to us in a soothing Chinese-inflected British English about extremely detailed ceremonies that happened in the distant past in each of the various temples within the Forbidden City. Neither of us could keep up with all of the detail, so we would continue walking on, effectively cutting our nice tour guide off mid-sentence again and again.



At one point we came upon a very athletic Jamaican-appearing fellow surrounded by a shrieking throng of Chinese teens taking his picture as he calmly typed into his blackberry. I snapped a quick picture thinking he might be Usain Bolt, Asafa Powell, or another of the famous Jamaicans (a later comparison of his picture to those in the newspaper proved that he was neither Bolt nor Powell). All of a sudden a Chinese teen spotted us and asked to take a picture. Now we were the center of attention. Apparently they thought we were athletes and asked to pose with us. We happily obliged.

After walking around the *enormous* Forbidden City, we hopped a cab over to a massage place to work out the kinks. Cabs are great because the original Hutong, or warren of alleyways, that Beijing is made up of, is overlaid with wide streets at approximately half mile intervals. In other words, it's not a walking city. And cabs are usually about $2. Our massages were a guilt-free $20 each, and involved soaking our tired doggies in a wooden barrel full of hot slimy water. After an hour of relaxation, we decided to retire early.



Lost in translation:
1 pair of sunglasses--fell into public hole in the ground (toilet)

The USB drive at our internet cafe doesn't work, so we'll be posting pictures when we get to Hong Kong.