Beijing 3

The sun rose early and I treated myself to yoghurt with fruits.

The lady in the hotel kindly gave me a heart shaped pancake.

Kittens hide around the hotel.

Gubeikou village also has statues recalling of its past. It was very quiet, with no shops and very few restaurants (I haven’t seen any).

This part of the wall is overrun by creep-crawlies and plants. The bug being eaten by ants made a lot of noise, so much that I almost suspected it to be a mini drone.

The Great Wall of Gubeikou is mostly unrestored ( with the exception of the Gubeikou gate). It is also a long way from Beijing, making me the only teddy bear on it for most of the walk.

I chose the coiled dragon route.

Jiangjun tower.

The wall continues on but into a military zone so I went back to Gubeikou via a shortcut. (Some Chinese tourists seemed to be coming from the military zone though)

There were a lot of larvae, camouflaged as small twigs hanging along the path. These were almost impossible to avoid walking into to.

Find the posing chicken!

I took an another shower (it’s 80-100% humidity today) before saying goodbye to the hotel and its kittens. 🐱🧡
I met a friendly man, called small bear, from Shanxi, who helped me with my bag along the way to Beijing.
Xie xie! (Thank You!)

My hotel is situated at Beijing West railway station. A lot of people were sitting outside, waiting. The atmosphere was rather grim despite the glass passageways around.

I searched for a restaurant nearby for dinner.

Dinner was a rather embarrassing experience as I did not know how to use chopsticks so food occasionally fell onto my lap. The brown stuff was described on the menu as tea steamed red onion (I think) but tasted nothing like that. I also had prawn dumplings and quickly realised I didn’t know how to eat that either. 🙃

I managed the straw for iced tea though. (Fried bird claws were also on the menu but that was way beyond my skill level)

Qing man yong! (Formal version of bon apetit, meaning to eat slowly).

My (Railway) hotel was ready for anything.