Adventure of the month

Outside the walls of the Forbidden City Entering into the Emperor's private domain Fun with shadows The Forbidden City's "lucky" tree Anyone know where I could buy a panda? One of the Beijing Zoo's most popular residents looking a little worse for wear. "There! You got your picture. Can I please go back to sleep now?" Sensible advice considering there is a napping panda on the other side of this railing . Guarding the Summer Palace Upon our arrival in Beijing, Michael, our super-duper stellar guide, presented us with a list of optional tours which we could join, in addition to the handful which were included in our package. Being the independent traveller that I profess to be, I refused to check off even one. "No optional tours for us" I informed Michael. I had my guide book, had printed plenty of pages off of the internet and could tackle all of the activities covered in the tours at my own pace, on my ow

Day 1: No way were we ready for the subways But we did stroll down Wangfujing, Beijing's famed shopping street... ..and caught our first taste of Olympi-mania Later, we stopped by Tiananmen Square.. where the National Museum of China features an Olympic countdown clock. It is a good thing this happens to be a leap year. If not for that helpful irregularity, I would have missed posting anything for the month of February, and thus been required to change the name of the blog to "Adventure of the every other Month". Not too catchy. As always, my excuse for procrastinating has to do with an unusually busy month. How busy? Well, too busy to fit into one post, that's for sure. A couple of days ago, I returned from a trip to China which makes the term "whirlwind" seem insufficient. In the course of eight days, we managed to visit Beijing, where we climbed The Wall; Xian, where we put in a visit to some famed warriors and finally to Shangh