To think yesterday’s agenda was ambitious. This day’s agenda was even crazier. Not that it had a billion places or anything, but the time we had to wake-up. I think I wake up at 4:30 AM. Why this early? Why the daily flag-raising at Tiananmen Square, of course. Yeah, I’m crazy. And no, it wasn’t really worth it. It was cold, drizzling, and Chinese people have no patience to wait in an orderly line. It’s all push and shove.

Anywho, the more interesting part of the day started hours later, when I went with Wendy and Hyejin to the Temple of Heaven. It was a very lively place and the one place in Beijing that I just had to go to. I don’t know why, but after learning about it in City & Environment, I just really wanted to see it. It turned out to be very lively and lived up to my expectations. Both the temple and Altar of Heaven to the south of it (where sacrifices were made) thoroughly impressed me.

After completing our trip through the temple, we headed to Wangfujing to meet people for lunch… supposedly. That didn’t work out, so we grabbed lunch on our own. But not after walking down Wangfujing’s infamous Snack Street. Seeing deep-fried bugs and impaled scorpions (that are still moving!) make my stomach uncomfortable. Luckily, we didn’t eat any of the bugs, but I did have a beef bowl from Yoshinoya. Yummy stuff.

I was pretty exhausted by the time we got back to the hotel and I was almost dead on the plane. Naturally, I fell asleep and skipped the dinner on the plane. They left a funny sticker that said if I needed service after I woke up, I should call for a flight attendant. I’ll take a picture of the sticker when I get a chance.

Unfortunately, late arrival, and a little delay on the bus because of missing luggage meant a late night and not enough sleep for the next day. This is where my original Monday day-off would have been useful…

And that’s a wrap for the Beijing trip. Individual posts for each of the major places I visited some time in the future.