My Trip Souvenirs
How to go about planning a short visit to China???!! This is a difficult question to get answered for any traveller who plans their visit to this vast country with immense history, countless monuments, metropolitan cities, charming villages and what not. So, it is better to choose 1-2 places and cover it to the best if the visit is for a week or less. Our choice was Beijing and its suburbs for our first visit to China.
Day 1 was to visit The Great Wall of China; indeed Great as it is named. The Great Wall stretches across various parts of China along its course. We drove to the area in the Beijing suburbs where we can have a nice experience of the Wall, thereafter a short cable car ride to reach the site of the Wall. We walked quite a long distance on the Wall to quench our thirst to explore its beauty and significance. After leaving this historic site, we headed towards the Beijing National Stadium (The Birds Nest) where the Summer Olympics of 2008 was held. We spent our time enjoying the place and then bought our official souvenir from the stadium souvenir shop. The evening was dedicated to the Summer Palace. The place is really vast; in fact all the important attractions in Beijing sprawls across a vast area, and one needs to be thoroughly energised to cover the sites to the fullest. The Summer Palace with the Longevity Hill built in Chinese architecture, is very scenic with surrounding lakes and Chinese style gates, lawns and temples. For us, we felt heavily exhausted by this time, hence did a quick visit of the important areas of the Palace and headed for our dinner. Chinese cuisine is loved all around the world, it is an amazing fact that people across the globe have accepted Chinese cuisine, be it authentic or fusion. We feasted upon Sizzlers and it was yummy with the varied spice levels and was an awesome experience. To overcome the language barrier, we had noted down certain keywords in Chinese, to make sure we get the right food :).
We started the next day with an early morning visit to the Forbidden City, sprawling across more than 150 acres, the former Imperial Residence of the Chinese Emperors and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. One will need 3-4 hours to cover this place and enjoy the architecture and serenity of the complex. History of the imperial rulers, their wives and concubines is what you get to know from all around the complex. The valuable possessions, rich heritage, luxurious lifestyles is all exhibited in the museum. The Chinese architecture can be enjoyed to the fullest here, typical gates, dragons, roofs, paintings, ceramic potteries etc and time passes by so fast exploring this place. Next destination was Tienanmen Square, very close to the Forbidden City. The square is named after the Gate of Heavenly Peace, Tienanmen. This is located in the heart of Beijing City and houses the mausoleum of Mao Zedong, who founded the PRC. After spending a good time in the square, we then headed off to the National Zoo, to see the Giant Panda.
The last day of our trip was dedicated to shopping and a visit to the Temple of Heaven. It is an extremely beautiful temple with blue roof and stands high after a flight of stairs and indeed we feel we could reach heaven from its beautiful interiors. Its vast, serene and very beautiful. Chinese Jades are world famous and we can buy authentic jade ornaments from China.