3 July

Apologies for any readers out there. This entry is obviously long-delayed.

Worse, it's being written fom my God-awful and hence is really brief.

IIRC:

Morning, off to the TV Tower for a view of Beijing from a high position.

Except, as was not uncommon, it was a really hazy morning. Clear visibility was limited to a couple hundred yards.

Next: a drive by the Olympics stadium en route to a... *%#@, forgot what it's called.... Freedom store?? Anyway, a place to purchase souvenirs at allegedly low prices with a restaurant in the back.

Lunched there, shopped there.

Actually, stopped there, lunched there, shopped there in '97 too...

....also en route to the Great Wall then too. What a small world....

(In '97 remember buying suitcase locks; nothing so mudane availeable now. This trip, bought jade necklace things for Shayna's posse.)

In '97, went to the Great Wall to discover that 2 May was May Day, too, with the Wall (or at least the part to which we were headed) closed to allow dignitaries access without any touristy riff-raff around.... Hours on a bus in stop + go traffic.

But at least when we reached the Great Wall, it was a relatively level stretch.

But not in 2007, oh, noooooo. This time, it was a stretch accessed by a brief cable car ride. And the area itself was very steep. A lot of stairs in really hot and humid weather.

On the way back to the bus, Donna bought her first in a series of silly hats. Eventually, it became a source of small amusement to our, um, comrades. (Note that the group was split into two groups for the tour. One group was cool, the other one was the other one.) I bought a sort of cowboy hat that Shayna adopted -- became her trademark for the rest of the tour -- til forgotten in Zhenjiang. (It also baked her brains in the heat; it was not a hot weather hat.)

from there, next and last stop for the evening was a Beijing duck dinner at a near classy Beijing duck factory of a restaurant. A number of girls, bored, headed to the parking lot where they played with their Chinese yoyos.

And look to the far right; some strange guy is photographing this as well....


See Shayna. See shayna look way, way up where she flung her yoyo. Forget whether she caught it, though....

As I said, that was the day, if I remember correctly....