The wonders of the orient!

What can I say... China was incredible! I never felt so foreign in my whole life. We toured Beijing and the Great Wall at Simitai which, of course, included all the main tourist spots but, our favorite part of the trip was simply walking through the hutongs (alleys) and seeing the people go about their daily lives.The markets, traffic and street vendors were fascinating.

Don't miss: The Forbidden City, The Summer Palace, The Temple of Heaven Park, the Great Wall of China

We stayed at a cheap backpackers hotel called the Jing Tai located in the southern section of Beijing. Mr Renny runs (ran) tour from there and will also (used to) do airport pickup and drop off for real cheap. He had an internet site but that link is no longer active. We hired him to drive us out to Simitai, about 2 hours out of Beijing to climb the Great Wall. Simitai is known for being a more remote section of the Wall and its also still in its natural, unrestored state.. it was a bit of a steep climb though!

From what Kelly and I experienced, Beijing was an easy city to get around in. We walked extensively and always felt reasonably safe. Public transportation is easy to use, even though everything but the numbers are written in Chinese. We asked someone at a hotel, not even our own, to write down the bus connections needed to get to the Summer Palace and then showed the characters to the driver and other passengers who were very helping in giving a hand. I would suggest doing the same for cab rides since we had a heck of a time getting back to the Jing Tai once because we weren't saying it right :-)

China Photos