On Saturday we finally (yes, the kids had been begging for quite some time!!) took the kids on the fast train to Beijing! It was a holiday weekend here and most locals travel on trains, so we had asked our ayi to go and buy the tickets for us on Wednesday to guarantee we had seats! We took a taxi from our house to the train station a bit too early on Saturday morning, but we wanted to make sure we had plenty of time to acclimate ourselves to the station! It was really quite nice - there were comfy couches to sit on while we waited. Now, these couches were blocked off, but one of the joys of being a foreigner here is being innocently ignorant! So, we have no idea if we belonged on the couches or not, but we made ourselves at home and sat back to enjoy the people watching!
Finding our train and boarding was quite easy. We had tickets in the very roomy section of the train. They offered water and took my stroller for me - it was very convenient! Throughout the journey, you could not feel that you were going, at one point, 335 kmh. We arrived in Beijing in just under 30 minutes! Pretty impressive for a trip that usually takes about 2 hours in the car!
The Beijing station was nice and easy to get around in. We quickly found the que for taxis and got in one to take us to our favorite shopping mall, The Place! Our mission of the day was to get the boys a desperately needed haircut! They, of course, wanted to go to Melon Heads and so did we because they do a fantastic job on their hair! After two quick haircuts we shopped around in the toy stores (I was trying to get ideas for Eensie's birthday!), looked at the Sony teeny, tiny netbook (almost bought it even though we can't stand our Sony laptop with Vista!!), ate lunch at a yummy Italian restaurant, and then went to the bookstore and stocked up on books to get us through our last 6 weeks here until we leave for the summer! After that we headed out into a gorgeous, blue skied day in Beijing!!
We decided to take the kids to the Temple of Heaven because they hadn't been there and it was not too far from the train station! The tree lined path leading up to the main temple is lovely and nice on a hot day because of the shade!! The kids enjoyed ice cream treats in relative peace, despite the ever present paparazzi.
And finally after almost a mile walk, we arrived at the Temple of Heaven. The structure is breathtaking and the colors are exquisite. These pictures do not do it justice! It is one of my favorite sites to visit in Beijing because it is not nearly as crowded as places like the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace!
And you get to watch a bit of impromptu ballroom dancing right in the middle of the park. It was mesmorizing!!
We let the kids take a peek inside the temple and then we headed to a little exercise park close by. It was close, but not close enough to the nearest restroom, therefore, Coop got to go "local" when he couldn't hold his little movement!!! You can see how excited I was about this!!!
After that episode, we headed back to the train station and were back in Tianjin before I could read 2 chapters in my new book!!
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