Day 2- Summer Palace and Peking Duck

Today Logan and I headed to the Summer Palace. It is about 40 minutes outside of Beijing. We shared a taxi with the two Swiss girls that were sharing out hostel room. The taxi was only $8 Canadian! The palace was beautiful with a lake in the center- easily could have spent an entire day there. The temples of the Palace had wonderful names such as Temple of Clouds in the sky. (ok i made that one up but you get the point). On the way back from the Summer Palace it was just Logan and I in the taxi, naturally I slept, but Logan informed me that the taxi also took the time to nap while we were on the highway. He kept nodding off then waking up and slapping his face to try and stay awake. Have I mentioned before that drivers here are nuts??

After the Summer Palace we checked out of Far East International Youth HOstel and checked into the Intrepid tour at a hotel nearby. Before we met the group for orientation we had a brief run in with some crazy clothing shop girl who actually chased me down the hallway shouting at me to by her clothes. She clutched onto my arm too and wouldn't let go! But I guess it worked cause I bought a fake North Face rain coat from her shop.

The Intrepid group is pretty cool. Our tour guide is a local Chinese girl from Xi'an (stop 2 on our trip). Her English name is Vivian. For din din she took us to a local restaurant for Peking Duck. It was my first time really eating duck and it was soo tastey. The duck is cooked a special way then sliced into a specific amount of bit size pieces. We then roll it in a thin flour tortilla and eat it with cucumber and this brown sauce. It was a great introduction to the trip!!

That covers it for day 2! I'm about five days behind in my writing cause internet access is limited (am sharing with lots of people....people are lining up behind me) hehe

thanks for your comments I look forward to reading them!!