Beijing with Grandpa!

On March 30th, we flew to Beijing to meet up with Cody’s dad, Paul.  He had been wanting to go there for a really long time.  Seeing The Great Wall and other Beijing sites was one of his life’s dreams, so we were more than thrilled to fulfill that dream with him!! 

Saturday night we went next door to our hotel and discovered a delicious—and giant—bowl of beef noodle soup similar to what Paul and Cody ate during their missions in Taiwan.

After attending the Beijing ward on Sunday, the kids got to open Easter presents from Grandma and Grandpa (but let’s be honest, mostly Grandma).  :)

  

Sunday afternoon we visited Beihai Park in central Beijing. 

  

The park has a history of 1000 years and is one of the oldest and most authentically preserved imperial gardens in China.

 

 

Beihai Park was built as a pleasure ground for the imperial family within the Imperial City, and is said to be more magnificent than any imperial complex outside the capital.

The day was gray and hazy (and COLD!), which apparently is pretty typical for Beijing, but we lucked out and had pretty great weather the rest of the week!

The plum blossoms were in full bloom and absolutely stunning!  

 

Not really sure where this gal fits into the story, but she was on the grounds having a photo shoot, so we decided to butt in!  To me she looks like a character from a Chinese/Japanese video game.

After walking the grounds at Beihai Park, we headed out onto the street to try to find a taxi. 

 

It got a little stressful trying to find one, but we were amused by some of the vehicles we saw along the way. 

 

Eventually a man in a car spotted an opportunity to make some cash and decided to pick us up to be our taxi.  We had him take us to the DongHua Men Market, which is well known for its snack stalls full of scorpions and other scrumptious eats.  The driver repeatedly told us to not eat anything here.  “It is not safe!”

 

Some of the more normal snacks: candied fruit and various meat kebabs (including squid).

 

Some of the more scary snacks: frog, scorpion, sea horse, grasshopper, silk worms, spiders, beetles, maggot, centipede, snake, and worms.  I’m sure you’ll be surprised to know we didn’t have a hard time heeding the driver’s advice to not eat here. 

After this place revved up our appetites, we found a nice Beijing-style place to eat dinner with some delicious ginger beef and sautéed snow peas!