Wow. Today has been a long day and been up and down. On the up, the “Stig” has arrived! For all of you that know the Top Gear, you will get the reference and for those that don’t, there is google. 🙂 With the Stig here, i finally had an adventure buddy, so this morning it was a little work over breakfast and then off to the Forbidden City to show him the place.

On the way over I spotted this shot of dad and daughter in traffic.

Work’s Commute

And as we crossed though the mini gardens, saw the scene below.

Rest Crew

Unfortunately, with each pass, my like of the Forbidden decreases. Yet again a ton of tourists and all wanting photos with me. The Stig was creeped out by it. He thought I was exaggerating!

Back to the Forbidden City

Meet “Cameron”

More Fans

I did find a few people that I liked.

Family fun

Center of attention

The morning was spent in the FC, and then it was back to the hotel for more work and trying to plot the way out of Beijing. We were sadly informed that the trains and planes were booked going out of Beijing to get to both Xian and Shanghai. I am itching to get out of Beijing!!

Settling in for another night in Beijing it was work, and nap. The Stig was tired from the travel over. Well by now you know how these afternoon naps go, and we woke up LATE and missed the night market again!! Determined to not just sit in the room and complain, we headed out to look for food…

Uh oh…

Ha, but luckily they were in the middle of cleaning, so the plans for a bad McD meal were thwarted and we went on in search of a new option. On the way back, i saw it again; the Blue restaurant!! And they were still open at 1:30AM! Well, i should say barely open, we came in and sit down and were immediately surrounded by the staff waiting to takeout order. The menus were huge and extensive, there were 4 separate menus. We were going to get mutton ribs, but she kinda informed us that “We kinda closed now. How about something else?”. Fair enough. So we settled on some other options.

A late night feast

The food was awesome!! Their food lived up to the great marketing efforts. The coolest part though was green tea that the Stig drank. Look closely, those are leaves in there!

The walk back was how it always has been. Chill.

Puddle

So now it’s off to bed. Its crazy late here, and we have a packed day trying to get the hell out of Beijing. More later.