The Great Wall

After the Great Wall our guide brought us to a "Free Foot Massage" session where the staff try to get you buy medical products.And after that to a "Free Chinese Tea" drinking session where they try to sell you pricey Chinese tea. Soon it was time to get to the airport for our flight home.
The sky is clear and the air fresh once you are out of Bejing
You need to be fit to climb the Great Wall
We visited the section of the Great Wall at JunYong Pass
View of Chang An Street from my hotel room. Chang An street is where parades are held. This road leads to the Forbidden City. The railway station is on the left

Beijing

Commercial activities have taken place here since the middle of the Ming dynasty in. In the Qing Dynasty, ten aristocratic estates and princess residence were built here, soon after a well full of sweet water was discovered, thereby giving the street its name "Wang Fu" (aristocratic residence), "Jing" (well).
We ended the day touring Wang Fu JIng
We lunched at a restaurant which cooked Imperial dishes that the Emperor ate. When the Qing dynasty ended in 1911 the Manchu princes fell into hard times. They never worked when they were in power. So one of them hired some of the Imperial kitchen chefs and started this restaurant.After lunch we were brought to the local silk factory and Chinese tea shop to milk our wallets. I guess that is why they are selling the tour at such low prices
On our way to lunch we stopped by to take photos of the iconic Olympics Birds Nest stadium
Our guide brought us up to the watch towers to visit the Feng Shui master who was trying to sell us his auspicious ornaments. No luck here as nobody bought anything.
The Chinese have just celebrated their National Day and the area around Tian An Men is crowded with local tourists
We ended the tour at Tian An Men square or Gate of Heavenly Peace which is in the north. When the Mings build Tian An Men gate there wasn't a suare here. It was the Qing who created a square about a quarter the size of the present one in 1651.At present the square is about 40.5 hectres. It is the largest square in the world
The outer court is where the Emperor conducts his ceremonies
The palace is made up of the inner court which is where the Emperor and his concubines live.

As we proceeded with the tour I realised how big the palace was. There are endless rooms ,courtyards and pavillions. There are 9,999 rooms here.The Chinese belived the 10,000 th room is reserved for heaven
Our day started with a tour of the Forbidden palace from the south gate. Our guide told us the last Ming emperor hung himself here when the Manchurians entered Beijing. He had his face wrapped with a piece of cloth as he was too ashamed to face his ancestors

Sendai

It was another rush rush day as we raced to Sendai airport for our flight back to Beijing. We arrived at Shanghai airport around 6pm and had to clear immigration there before reboarding the flight to Beijing. By the time we checked in to our beijing hotel it was already already 10pm.

After the tour we walked to the nearby Shinto shrine

There are about 260 islands (shima) covered in pines (matsu)
Sendai is one of those Samurai cities in feudal Japan and it literally means "hermit on a platform". By 9am we had checked out and were on our way to Matsushima

From Hakodate to Sendai

From Aomori we spend three hours in the bus before we reached our rest point at a farm that caters to tourists. But it was 4pm already and was about to close.We managed to taste their homemade ice cream created with milk from their own cows. By the time we checked into our hotel, it was already past 8pm. Shopping centres in these areas close around 8pm
Leaves are starting to turn red in anticipation of winter
View of the lake
We had lunch at one of the hotspring resort at the lake
Setting off for Lake Towado
3 hour later we arrived at Aomori is is famous for its apples
The tour was suppose to be a purely Hokkaido tour. But the travel agent screwed up and were unable to get a flight out of Sapporo.So we had to take our flight out of Sendai instead. Anyway it was interesting to take the train to mainland Japan. We were supposed to stop at Aomori in the Tohoku or North East region to vtake our bus
We had to take a train from Hakkodate station to Aomori early next morning
It was dinner time by the time we left the park .
Next stop, Gokyaku park in Hakodate
A photo from our winter trip here in January 2009
Onuma koen in Autumn


We had lunch at Onuma Koen national park
The bears wave at us begging for us to throw apples into the pit
View of Sapporo
Going up the Sapporo Olympic ski jump




Otaru in Autumn is so different from our winter trip

Locals come here to collect water for drinking
We were brought to the foot of the mountains to have a drink from the local springs
It was an early start for us today.

Off to Japan and China

After visiting the Hokkaido clock tower we headed to our hotel for the nite at Rusutsu Resort.
Horse carriage rides are available in Autumn



We decided to take advantage of the Hokkaido package offered by Air China. It was my third trip to Hokkaido but it was $300 cheaper than the ANA package and we had two nights in China thrown in free!!Instead of flying direct to Tokyo Narita to change planes to Hokkaido we had to fly into Beijing. We arrived in the afternoon and went straight into Sapporo to take a tour of the Government office. It was about 15 degree celcius and one could walk around wth a t shirt and a jacket