Beijing | The Exhibition Hall

Glenn, our tour guide, ended up meeting us at our hotel and helped coordinate a taxi to the Beijing Exhibition Hall.  I just want to start off by saying that we would have not been as efficient or got as much our of Beijing had we not hired Glenn.  This was our first time opting for a private tour guide and it was worth every penny - we loved it.  It was so nice to not have to worry about transportation (he just hopped in the taxi with us).  If you are headed to Beijing and need a tour guide, let me know and I will give you his information. 

This was an important statue because it was a lion, with fish scales and ram horns and something else I am forgetting right now, which is why I should have written this post a month ago :).

I loved hearing about the layout of Beijing - with the rings it is a very similar layout to Chengdu.

All of the mountains surrounding Beijing!

In the middle is the forbidden city and Tian'anmen Square.

We went up to the next floor to see Beijing if you look at the longest road in Beijing that runs right through the heart of the city.

Here is Tien'anmen Square on the left and the Forbidden City on the right.

Coal park where we later climbed up to the top of that center building to get a panoramic view of the Forbidden City from above.

I have been a long time Olympic fan-lover and so I was definitely geeking out that we were going to get to see the Olympic park!

The famous bird's nest and water cube were my favorites!!

Then, we moved to the main attraction! A 3D model of Beijing - Glenn told us that they come in here every year to make corrections/adjustments as new buildings are added/demolished.  He pointed out all of the places that we would be going, other interesting sites and even our hotel!  It really gave us some perspective as to where we were staying and everywhere we would be going.

It was ginaormous.

So many buildings.

Can you believe we have made it this far in a blog post without a picture of our girls?!?

She loved taking a look.

This is where we had come in at the train station the night before.

Temple of Heaven.

The financial district which is newer and where the tallest buildings in Beijing are being built.

The girls discovered that they could push a button and make it go from daytime to nighttime.

Olympic park again :).

I also liked that from this perspective you could see how much greenery there was in Beijing - I am constantly amazed at how well done the parks are in China.

While we were waiting for the English movie to start, the girls had fun jumping around on this interactive play mat.

We watched the movie and learned so much about Beijing - our day was off to a great start!