Speed-touring Beijing and the Great Wall

We arrived in Beijing after a 3-hour flight from Kunming, and checked into the Park Plaza Wangfujing, the most upscale hotel of our trip. Looking out our hotel window, we saw something we hadn't seen since we'd left Seattle, a Starbucks.

From the hotel, we took the subway to the the Palace Museum, aka the Forbidden City. It was chilly, and the Forbidden City was relatively empty. I'd forgotten how huge it is - it's about 1 km from north to south. We only had about an hour until it closed, so we had to tour it very quickly.

The next morning, we chartered a taxi from our hotel to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall, about two hours from the city, and back to the airport for a flight to Seattle. The Great Wall was very cold (but there were plenty of vendors to sell us warm hats) and there were very few tourists. The wall was as impressive as the first time I'd seen it.