Like I said, we started our trip with Beijing.
The first thing I noticed about Beijing is that NO ONE (except maybe hotel workers and market hawkers) speaks English (or any other language), so be sure to come prepared: My dad had a great idea of writing in advance all the places we were going to visit in CHINESE (and of course, his first language – russian, so he would know what it means ) so that helped a lot in communicating taxi drivers and passers-by, although some of them had trouble understanding where exactly we want to go.
If you didn’t do that – don’t panic! Just ask the information desk at the airport, and your hotel reception people to write your destination down on a paper (in Chinese, of course ha ).
 
We arrived in Beijing Capital International Airport around 1pm, and headed to our hotel.
There are several ways to get to Downtown Beijing from the airport – by bus, by rail, or by taxi.
We haven’t even considered the bus option because of it’s obvious inconvenience, so unfortunately I can’t really tell you how it works
Beijing has an extremely convenient subway, so that’s one good way to get to the city. It costs 25Y(or RMB – they use both names for their currency) – around 4USD, per person.
We’ve decided to take a cab since we were 4 people with luggage, and we figured that the price will be almost the same as the subway, but taxi is much more comfortable.
The taxi turned out to be even a little cheaper – cost us around 80Y to get to our hotel, but if you travel alone and try to spare some money on what you can – don’t be afraid – the subway is an excellent way to get to your destination. If you’re not sure what line to take and you’re afraid to be confused at the station, ask the information people at the airport before you go.
 
After a (something like) 40-minute ride (with traffic jams), we arrived at our hotel – Novotel Peace – a really nice hotel, with a pleasant staff and an excellent location!
We put our stuff in our rooms, and went to search for a nice restaurant to fill our stomachs after a 10-hour flight!
My sister and I are really fastidious about food, so I’ll tell you right now that even though we tried to keep an open mind, most of our meals were McDonald’s, KFC, and Pizza Hut. Our first meal in Beijing was KFC on Wangfujing street.
After that we just walked around the Wangfujing area, entering small stores, big malls, and occasional markets.
We didn’t do anything special on our first day, just got to know our area a little better.
Around 7pm it started snowing – I come from a warm country, where it never snows (except maybe once a year in a specific area), so that was a big deal for me
From what I heard it doesn’t usually snow in Beijing , so I guess it was a quite of a deal for Beijing people too  

 

On our first morning in Beijing we headed to the Temple of Heaven. It’s not just one building, like “the” temple of heaven, it’s a complex of religious buildings that was visited by the emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties to pray to heaven for good harvest – yeah, I copied this from Wikipedia ^.^

So after seeing cool traditional Chinese buildings, taking photos, and playing in the snow (I left my bag lying in the snow because of that! Luckily, good people of China didn’t touch it – I had all of my belongings there! ), we went to Hogqiao – the Pearl Market, which is near.
It may be called a “market”, but it’s indoor, like a mall, but with many stands instead of stores.
Also, it may be called *pearl* market, but it has only one floor where you can buy pearls, and the other four are full of anything you could think of – electronics, gadgets, clothing, shoes, accessories, iPhone/Galaxy covers, “beats by dre” replicas, everything for photography, watches, and many more!
I’m not really into fake versions of products, but this market is so much fun! The first time you’re there might be a little shocking – peddlers everywhere will shout at you to check their goods as you pass by their stand. If you stop and start checking their products out, they will immediately take that product out, and start offering you prices, colors, or quantity. Don’t show an interest right away! Start the negotiation with offering a price that is 4 or 5 (sometimes even more) times lower than what you’ve been offered. Some sellers will be easy to bargain with, while others won’t. If you think you can get a lower price, walk away from the stand – in most cases the seller will shout “what’s your best price?!”, and start lowering their offer, and sometimes even get to your initial bid. The point is to get to the lowest price the hawker will want to sell you a product.
It’s easy to find the value of what you want to buy there, because the same product is sold at several stands, so you can compare the minimum price.

When we left the market we didn’t know where the subway is, so we tried to catch a cab.
Catching a cab as a tourist in Beijing is almost impossible! For several times we were standing in the cold, trying to make them stop for us, but they didn’t (I’m talking about the empty ones!). If anyone knows what’s that all about, I’l be more than happy to know!
We found out later that the subway is right across the street – go out of the main entrance (where the pearl statue is), go left, cross the bridge, and voila – you’re at the Tiantandongmen (yeah, I know it’s catchy) station!
We ate lunch in a restaurant on the beautiful Qianmen street, and after that we went back to the Wangfujing area. We visited a small market on Wangfujing street – I don’t know its name, but I guess it’s Wangfujing Market It’s a small one, and I guess that it’s specially for tourist, because all they have there are souvenirs, and scorpion/snake/starfish/unidentified sea animals skewers.

Moving on to the third day: We planned to go to the Great Wall, and heard that there’s a tourist bus from downtown Beijing to the Wall and the Ming Dynasty Tombs. At first we thought that this is a good idea, but then we realized that we don’t really want to depend on others and the time it will take them to do the whole thing, and we didn’t want to waste the whole day on waiting for complete strangers, so we decided to rent a car.
Since we were already renting a car, we’ve decided to go to the Olympic stadium – “Bird’s Nest”, and the National Aquatic Centre – the “Water Cube” on our way to The Great Wall.
Now let’s go through the prices: The tourist bus from Beijing to The Great Wall and the Ming Dynasty Tombs costs 160Y – entrance tickets to the Wall and the Tombs not included.
If we were taking the car only for the Wall and the Tombs, it would cost us 600Y, but since we went to see the Olympic complex too it cost us 750Y. I remind you that we were 4 people, so to take a bus there would cost us a total of 640Y, and then we’d have to take a train or a taxi to get to the Olympic complex and spend more money, and more important – time, on getting there.
A single entrance ticket to the Great Wall costs 40Y for a regular ticket, and 45Y for a beautiful card you can keep to yourself as a souvenir. We took the 45Y ticket because my dad is into souvenirs, but honestly I don’t think I’ve even seen that ticket
The cable car from the entrance to the wall itself costs 60Y per person for a one-way ticket. When we bought the tickets the cashier insisted on not selling us round-trip ones, claiming that it’s impossible. Or at least that’s what we understood from her.
We’ve decided that we’ll figure it out when we get there, so we went up.
The view that revealed to us from the cable car was breathtaking: The snowy Great Wall in all its glory, sprawling on tops of basically all the mountains around. That was pure beauty ha.
After walking around, being excited about the view, and taking pictures on every electronic device we had, we went to see if we can take a cable car to go back, or we’re really going to have to walk all the way down (I swear I’m not a slouch! That is one hell of a way to do! ).
There is a cable car back!! WOOHOO!! It costs the same as going up – 60Y.

After that we drove a little more to the Ming Dynasty Tombs.
To be honest, if you’re not a huge Ming Dynasty fan, you have nothing to do there. Usually I’m all into seeing as many historical landmarks as you can if you’re already going to a place with an interesting history, but there’s nothing impressive or wow-ing about these tombs, but that’s just my opinion.
When I think about it, it was impossibly cold the day we were there, so the only thing I could think of is getting in the cozy car. Maybe if the weather was MUCH nicer, I would have a completely different impression of that place, so before going – do your research on that.
Anyway, the entrance tickets cost 40Y for the regular ticket per person, and 45Y for the nicer one.

We came back to Beijing. The way was much longer, because of traffic jams. I’m not sure how long it took, because I slept almost the entire drive, but I assume it was about an hour and a half.
The driver took us straight to the Silk Market. Like the Pearl Market, this one wasn’t all about silk, and it was like a big (and quite messy) mall – only with stores instead of stands this time.
I personally didn’t like it. Maybe because it wasn’t fun to bargain with the hawkers there, maybe it’s because it was too messy and too confusing to wander around without being lost, and maybe because I was just too tired and frozen from earlier that day.

We started our next day with a subway ride to the Tiananmen Square, and a visit to Mao Zedong’s (Chinese communist revolutionary) Mausoleum.
That was scary! Not the mausoleum itself, but the seriousness around the whole thing.
You can’t get in with any bag or camera (though you can keep your cellphone, just don’t try taking any pictures). There’s a storage for your belongings right across the street. The storage for all of our stuff (4 small bags) cost 26Y (not sure how they calculate it). The mausoleum entrance is free, just don’t bring any lighters, and shake your head politely when the chinese soldier will yell at you something. Oh and most important – keep quiet while you’re inside!
The whole thing takes like a minute. You just go in, see Mao, and go out.

After taking our stuff from the storage, we moved to the Tiananmen Gate, which is right across the street from the Tiananmen Square, and entered the Forbidden City.
There’s nothing I can tell you about this place except some historical facts, so you’ll have to see the pictures to get the feeling of what it’s like.
The price for an entrance ticket is 40Y per person.

After that we went to Panjiayuan – antique market. Most of the things sold on this market aren’t really antique, just antique-looking, but you can find here and there, and old phone or a gramophone.
I bought these super awesome sunglasses They cost me 100Y after bargain (They started at 380!). I tried to get them for cheaper but they just wouldn’t go lower than that. Anyway, I liked them too much to leave them there
In the evening we went to the beautiful Qianmen street again, to eat and do some shopping. I think that was my favorite street in Beijing!
Of course, Wangfujing is more glamorous and crowded, there are more shops and restaurants, and interesting things seem to happen all the time, but there’s something about the quiet and serenity on Qianmen. Plus, its architecture is amazing!

Since it was unbearably cold by our fifth (and last) day in Beijing, we’ve decided to spend it all on being in indoor places.
We went to the Pearl Market again, to buy some more souvenirs for our friends and family, and to buy more cool stuff for ourselves
Then we went to Dongdan street, which is full of shopping malls
It was Christmas Eve, so for dinner, we went to eat a Peking Duck in a fancy chinese restaurant on Wangfujing, named Quanjude.
The food was good, the service seemed to be a little unprofessional, but overall we had a great time!

The next morning we left for Shanghai.
I think that 5 days in Beijing are enough. Of course, if we wanted to extend our stay there we would easily find more interesting things to do, but for this time I think that was the perfect number of days.
Like I said, Beijing’s cold was really hard to me, so I was happy to leave it for a warmer place.

Beijing – you’ve been a pleasure! I definitely want to come back one day, but certainly NOT in the winter!

Transportation info:
It costs 10Y to get on a taxi, and 2Y more for each Kilometer (a little over 3Y per Mile). Like I said, we had a trouble catching cabs, so try to check where’s the nearest subway station to where you’re going.
Subway – any ticket costs 2Y, no matter how far you’re going. Extremely convenient!
Bus – costs 1Y, but I guess it’s unnecessary for tourist to take it, since the subway and taxis are so convenient
BTW, people in Beijing have their own rules of driving, so be careful when you cross the street!

Wow, I can’t believe I’ve finished writing this! I had so much fun, it brought up all the memories from the beginning of the trip!