Well the Chinese certain do not like Google, I am on Google chrome and when trying to find a site is comes back timed out. bloody frustrating. I get my Yahoo mail, booking.com and NZ herald, BBC, FB no luck at all. My Nord VPN is not giving me coverage at the moment. Penny using her Tablet can use Google so who knows what is going on. Not good for tourism when one needs access to research areas of the city to visit.
The hotel I chose to stay in was not my best pick, the desk people do not speak English having a frustrating time to ask questions using speech translation. We went to Tienanmen Square took the Metro which is 700m from the hotel once you get use to the tube lines it is quite easy to use. We had to queue up to go through security and show passport then we ventured on to the Square, this is where the small Chinese man confronted the tank. There were a lot of Chinese people there about 23 million people and about 1.3 billion people live in China, that is a lot of people. We got talking to a Chinese guy who was a tour guide we needed to find a bank that dealt with visa and master card, Penny wanted a sim card, we did some of the tour of the Forbidden City and got a running commentary, got the money and a sim card cost £25. Got the metro back to the hotel and dropped of some of our gear and went back down the road where we spotted a lot of people walking. It was a narrow street with shops either side with various kinds of merchandise and food places. Some of the food dishes looked interesting. We went into a bar restaurant and the rice was hot pork luke warm and the veges cold had been frozen. We will not visit that place again. Then Penny spotted a shop with souffles so we had a mango and strawberry was okay and then she spotted Spanish churros with ice cream and some chocolate on it where in Spain a little pot of warm chocolate to dip into it. Was okay and the first time Penny had tried it.
Found a place doing tours to the Great Wall wanting £69 for the 2 of us out tour man wanted £80 and an hour less on the wall. Penny found another tour site much cheaper waiting to hear back from them. Back in the hotel and more research for the great Wall trip and Summer Palace.
Maurice's Travel 