The top!

The header beam went up today, rain and all. It looks great! Of course there were a few inconsistancies in the product from the stone carver, but we will work out the kinks, and hopefully you will never notice. I won't say what, you can tell me when you are here!

Before and after

Plants come and they go! Some faster than others. Here is our lovely albiet too fluffy and wet garden in front of the suites at the entrance. The next shot is the same area today. sniff. I found good homes for all of them. We will start the fountain as soon as the entrance is finished. Which you see below. We have to put on the header next with the moulding ect.. excellent!!

South of the border where the Lions play?

Hola! We are back and doing our thing! Change is afoot at Eden, and as usual it involves wild animals! Or something like that! We have bought 4 pretty large stone lions and will be making a fountain out of them to greet our guests with a roar! (or a splash).
We also ordered from the same stone carvers some new columns and stone moulding to replace our wooden ones that were featured here last year under "moldy" and "gross". Our mason, Pedro (not my Pedro) and his helper put one up today. The column is in 4 parts and officially is heavy as hell. He will put the other one up tomorrow! Yee ha!

Our last full day in Beijing

Today was our last full day in Beijing, and we made the most o it!! First off we did what many visitors to Beijing do, we went ice skating! August was keen to make igloos and throw snowballs before he saw the rink. But he soon re aligned his expectations and was struggling along the edge. Not for long! I was so impressed after maybe 4 laps around he was in the middle with me and skating along on his own. Evita too got a pair of skates and did her laps, but she decided ice cream was more interesting. Go figure.

After the skating we decided to go and visit the Birds nest and the Water cube. None of our events took place in these venues so we hadn't gotten a chance to see them yet. Well we used the new subway line and it got us close. We milled around there admiring the view of the buildings but from afar. Then magically we were picked out from the crowd to receive "Olympic Green Passes". We were escorted to the green and could walk up to the buildings and generally felt like royalty. What a great way to end our visit to Beijing and a cherry on top of our China Vacation.
Tomorrow we will begin our journey back to Mexico. We have a night flight from here and then one night in LA before our toes can bask in our warm tropical waters.

Jim highly reccomends that all of our readers begin planning an extended vacation immediately: It's the only way to travel.

Hasta la vista!

Let the games begin

We went to our first event and it was super fun. The Venue was the Beijing Technology University Gym. It was beautiful and looked like it had been finished yesterday. We saw badminton, which is very popular here in Asia. We watches many many games, but the most exciting one was the doubles match between the Japanese and the Chinese women. China is in yellow. The teams were so evenly matched. I felt bad that one had to lose, but the Chinese did. I am sure that they were sorely disappointed.

after all the excitement was over, we did what any self respecting Mexican far from home does...Nachoes and burritos! yeah!!

Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Olympics

I have clipped these photos from Google images...
For any of you who have not gotten a chance to see the opening ceremony of the Olympics, try to see the first 30 -40 minutes, before all of the athletes come out. It was amazing!! The money that China must have spent and the sheer number of people who participated was phenomenal. truly wonderous!

The Temple of Heaven

This is one of the iconic views of Beijing for the Olympics, it is on every coffee cup and even made out of gold and available at the Olympics souvenir shop. It is a perfectly round temple that the emperor used to go and pray for good crops. It is part of a huge complex with multiple gardens and buildings, all beautifully restored and in perfect condition for the onslought of tourists.
Throughout the gardens and the long corridor there were groups of clubs. Dancing club music club etc. which was really cute seeing people use the area for other things rather than just viewing.

Tonight is the opening ceremony of the Olympics, the foreigners are coming fast and furious. It's great!

Wa Fo Temple and the Botanical Gardens

Jim has been interested in going to the temple of the reclining Buddha for a while, but it is a bit out of town or so we thought from looking at the map. We decided to make a go of it and were pleasantly surprised at the less than 10 dollar taxi fare. When we arrived at the temple gates we were surprised again to find out that the temple was IN the botanical gardens. We headed directly to the Buddha and a well preserved temple with the best stocked gold fish pond in China. We bought some food for the guys and they were jumping out of the water by the thousands to get to the stuff. The turtles in the pond were herded together on a small raft to keep safe from the swarms. The temple also "sold" fish and turtles to release....back into the pond! Then the next day they go and pick more out of the same and sell them again. I don't really know what Buddha would think of that...

The rest of the garden was equally nice. There was a LARGE tropical conservatory (the biggest in Asia..) full of all of our common plants from the beach, just kidding. Actually there were many different ecosystems inside. The desert one was the most unusual i thought. That is a golden barrel cactus that Jim is next to. I have never seen that before,. Also check out those Lily pads, they look like plastic, but they are 100% real. i would like to bring a few of those home, but the suitcases are full to the brim. we will be buying another one shortly.

Templeside Home Hostle

We decided that we wanted to spend a few days in a traditional Chinese Hu Tong. Hu TOngs are the old houses that popular with the multi generational Chinese Families. Many of the Hu Tong areas have bee torn down by the government putting up new high rise apartment buildings. And in a way you can see why. The tall apartments we have calculated can hold about 1,000 people in a big one, the single story homes, even if they are packed in, many less i am sure.

As is common in many places the old has become popular again even here in modern Beijing, so the remaining Hu Tong houses are being bought up and turned into ....boutique hotels! Luckily we found a plae that was only a guest house, and not pretentious at all. Bobby the owner of Templeside Home Hosle, was a delight and very helpfull. An excelent English speaker and of course knowlageable about all the ins and outs of the city. His Hu Tong had 10 rooms and a lovely rooftop terrace over looking the neighbourhood and the local temple. Evita and August were entertained by the captive cricket in the office. A good time was had by all.

The Wall

Of course no trip to Beijing is complete with out a trip to the Great Wall. We opted to visit the Mutianyu section of the wall as that is supposed to be less touristy. Ha ha hahahhahahahahhahah less then every square inch of the path up filled with hawkers and tricksters. Just ask Jim about the pancakes...
We bypassed most of it by taking the ubiquitous cable car up and down. Not like we were trying to avoid the slog up or anything....
It was as beautiful as it looks in photos and we also got to share it with the french Olympic soccer team. Cool.

The sights

Well so far in Beijing we have seen Acrobats riding bikes, the forbidden city, the wall around the city, the geological museum and many more, but noting beats the salad bar at Pizza Hut!
The local PH here in the XiCheng district only allows ONE TRIP to the salad bar. Well we though that was kind of strange until we saw the masterpieces that people were making!
Not a single person who went to the salad bar (and we were sitting right beside it) failed to take at least 15 minutes to meticulously pile his or her salad in to a leaning tower of Piza like extravaganza. Most of them had consultants at their side, advising on the clingability of this or that vegetable. Most used piled cucumber slices to make a ring wall above the edge of the bowl and then filled in the ring and continued piling from there.
Jim and August had a go, and although i can't say much for the taste it was a work of art.

Beihai Park and the highest point in Beijing

One of our first excursions in Beijing was to Beihai Park. We discovered t ws one of the more popular parks in the city after we arrived and viewed the throngs. Never the less there was still a paddle boat left to let and we cast off into the large lake surrounding the 1,000 year old stupa in the middle of the island in the middle of the garden. Jim was a machine and paddled us all around the lake in 90 degree heat no less.
Then we crossed the street to the Jing Shan park which is home to the highest point in Beijing. Unfortunately you have to climb to get to it! The pagoda was beautiful. Obviously recently restored and with unbeatable views of the Forbidden city and the rest.