We’re leaving Beijing tomorrow at noon, so that pretty much wraps up this leg of the trip.<\/p>\n
On Monday we got a driver from the hotel to take us to the Great wall (Juyongguan<\/a> section). That was excellent.<\/p>\n After the wall, we were thinking about lunch, but the driver spoke no english. Through the magic of Pleco<\/a>, I translated “lunch, noodles”, to which he responded (thanks to its handwriting recognition) something that translated like “noodles with bean sauce”. We said yes, and he took us somewhere back in Beijing. We convinced him to eat with us and had something I have since learned is called “zha jiang mian<\/a>” and was amazing.<\/p>\n Pointers to good zha jiang mian in Vancouver would be appreciated, since the idea of not having it again makes me sad.<\/p>\n Today, we walked through Tiananmen square<\/a> and the Forbidden City<\/a>. Then back south through Wangfujing<\/a>.<\/p>\n To Hangzhou tomorrow, where I honestly hope there is less to see, since I don’t think we can keep up this pace: I think the combination of walking everywhere (including up the wall) and mental overhead trying to figure out how to do things without sharing a language with the locals is taking its toll.<\/p>\n