Asian Adventure: Beijing Edition

Hey folks! Sorry it's been a while since my last post; it has been a very busy couple of weeks. But I took my last law school final EVER yesterday, so life is good! I can't believe we made it all the way through law school. It will be nice to take a couple days off before I start preparing for the bar exam.

But in other news, Sarah and I had a fantastic time in Asia. We left on March 30th for my law school competition, and didn't get back until April 12th. We had a lot of fun, even though we didn't win the competition. Plus, Sarah managed to find a way for us to have an extended layover in Beijing on our way to Hong Kong, so here are some photos. I'll be sure to post more from the rest of our trip later in the week.


We arrived in Beijing at 5:20 in the morning after 23 hours of traveling, and immediately hopped in a cab to head to the Mutianyu portion of the Great Wall. In retrospect, hiking up a mountain at high altitude directly after a day of flying was probably not a good idea, but we made it to the top, and basically had the whole wall to ourselves.


Fortunately, Sarah and I had brought some pop tarts for an awesome Great Wall energy boost. I'm contemplating writing a letter to the makers of pop tarts to thank them. Those guys kept us alive and moving during our one-day marathon in Beijing.


After that, we had our cabbie drive us into town to go to Tiananmen Square and take some photos of the giant Communist statues. Sadly, the line to see Mao's creepy preserved corpse (behind me) was too long so we had to skip it.


After that, we made our way to the Forbidden City, which is just on the other side of the street. It is massive! It took use a while to go through and see it all, but it was really amazing.


Then we had some lunch, and were amazed to find we still had some time, so we made our way over to the Temple of Heaven to see some of the sights surrounding the Buddhist temple. By then, it was time to head back to the airport for our 6:30 flight to Hong Kong. We really packed in everything we could during our 12 hours in Beijing, and we had a great time. Stay tuned for an account of our adventures in the Special Autonomous Region of Hong Kong.