China 2008: Day 4: Walking Beijing
Finally free of the ravages of the tour, we took a cab over to Wangfujing Dajie (Wangfujing Street) to do some exploring on our own. 20 or 30 years ago, it was still the original market area, but today it's been paved over, blocked off, and is throughly modern aside from a few side streets, which are the cool part.
Tons of food, shops, and so much street food on the side areas that we were very sad our starving stomachs took us to the closest area (the Oriental Plaza and its underground mall) as soon as we got off the cab and into one of their food courts. OOPS. We snacked and snacked, even succumbed to the KFC temptation after the "lamb" skewers found on the street, then decided to just walk around areas beyond the Forbidden City and the downtown core.
That lead to stops at the Peninsula Hotel bar, passing by a bunch of exotic car dealerships, RMB3 for 600mL bottles of beer at a little local restaurant (mmmmmmmmmm beer!!), stinky tofu with the locals, and a long walk east and north towards our hotel and what we hoped was Din Tai Fung. We ended up within 2 blocks of Din Tai Fung, but got screwed when we found our map didn't actually have enough detail on it to show the streets we needed-- or the street names of some of the big streets.
Note: urban geographer that I am, I still need a decent map or the ability to ask for help in the local language. I failed miserably on both parts.
We eventually gave up, freezing cold, after wandering the foreign consulate area we were in, and took a cab back to the hotel, where we had Beijing (er, Peking?) duck again. Yummy-- but not as amazing as we were hoping. The sad part is, I think we walked past the British and the Canadian consulates (maybe the Saudi Arabian one too?) and if we were there during business hours, we might have been able to get directions in English.
It was worth it, though-- to see Beijing, wander the local areas, find all the random streets...
