Day one Beijing

There are metal statues all over of both people and animals - possibly brass or bronze and they are touched by many people I would guess for luck - so I touched them too.  Since we arrived a day early we had today to explore and that we did - off on side streets and big streets for at least 3 hours.

 This looks like a very nice toilet building.  We did see several signs for "public toilets" but they looked less desirable than this near the Forbidden City (official name is Palace Museum).  Forbidden City was completed in 1490 which is 2 years before Columbus sailed from Portugal!

 Tian'an Men Square - site of the 1989 suppression of the Democracy movement.

 We paid 6 CNY (about $1) for the 2 of us to enter a beautiful and huge park near Forbidden City.  I saw all these beautiful clean benches and noone sitting on them and they all had signs like this.  I walked up close to one and smelled paint - good thing we didn't decide to rest our rear ends!

 Chairman Mao - he became leader of the Chinese Communist Party in 1935 and died in 1976 and the Cultural Revolution was brought to an end.

We weren't exactly sure where we were and see few "westerners" so we stopped to look at this map.  It was good because it told us where we were but all the street names were in Chinese and our maps were in English - so we just kept walking.

Laundry day down a side street.

Lunch from the SuperMarket - 2 large bottles of pop and 3 bags of chips for 18 CNY about $3.  I had to try the Inca Chips with "ethnical flavor" and they were good.

I noticed this bike rental place and I also read in the Chinese Daily that there is a movement to encourage more bike rental places and fewer vehicles - sounds like Minneapolis!  Not sure about these bikes though.  The guy did have a whole wall of fix-it tools.

So the people have been lovely.  Three times today so far a different person has rung our room doorbell to ask if the room was cleaned well!  Not sure how many times a day this happens.
I also noticed in reading the daily paper there is not one mention of the big typhoon that hit China - not a word!  Looking forward to a welcome cocktail and dinner reception to meet the tour group tonight and tomorrow leaving by 7:30am to see the Great Wall - woohoo.