Walking Like There's No Tomorrow

The internet has been funky, to say the least, over here the past few days. Now that it's working again, I can fill you in on the weekend.

Today (Friday), we went back to Tian'amen Square. So, we left the hostel and started walking thinking that making two lefts would be easy and therefor, allow us to walk due south and right to the square. That was our first mistake. We stopped at a store:

to get something to eat thinking it was only a four mile walk. I decided on some yogurt (cherry/coconut):

mainly because it was such a large container.

As we walked, and walked, and walked a bit further, we came across embassy row (this is where we figured out we had to have made three left turns instead of two because we were walking way to the east and north of the square!). We never did find the US Embassy. I'm kicking myself for not taking the Swedish Embassy's picture but we were pretty tired by then since we essentially ened up further away from Mao and Co. then when we were at the hostel. We decided to find the first train that we could since we had walked for more than two hours and on the way, we found these soldiers practicing marching:

We tried to give them tips on how to walk aimlessly, far, and without direction but it was probably good for us that they didn't speak English.
We almost stopped for a slushy:

but decided to keep truckin' on for the train. BTW, first 7-11 I've been in with owners that were not Pakastani or Indian! Go figure!
So we get to the train and after a transfer (yes, we had walked so far from where we should have that it required TWO trains to get back to Tian'amen Square!) we made it. Unfortunately, the tiny three-delay in arriving meant that the mausoleum that we had come to see WAS CLOSED! When it gets hot like this (each day has averaged about 98 or so) they are only open from 8:00 AM to noon. We might go Wed or Thu but who knows.

On the way back to the hostel (we walked since we thought we had the left-turn problem taken care of; wrong), we passed a Catholic Church:

It's called The Catholic East Church, or Wangfujing Catholic Church, and is one of the best-preserved religious sites in the middle of Beijing. The East Church was originally called Saint Joseph's Church, and was built in the 12th year (1655) of Emperor Shunzhi during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). We went in and I would have taken pictures but it was very dark and the few I took did not turn out. It's just neat being inside a building or at/on/in any historical building whose history dates back so many years.

As I mentioned before we walked for a while. We left at about 11:30 AM, took the train to Tian'amen Square and got off at 1:50 PM, and then proceeded to walk until after 6:00 PM. Conservatively speaking, we walk between 3-4 miles an hour. So that means, for the roughly five hours we were walking, we had to have walked close to 15 miles. We never stopped walking! It was 99 today so I figure we lost any bloating problems as well.

Tomorrow, we go to the Hard Rock Cafe, Hooters, and maybe a nightclub. Should be an adventure in walking again as we refuse to admit defeat to the poorly written maps!

written by

akstoltzy on June 18, 2010 from Beijing, China

from the travel blog: China

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