Beijing on a 72-hour visa

It was time now to head home to New Zealand after our fabulous UK-Ireland trip. As we were flying with Air China, we decided on a stopover in China’s capital, Beijing on the way. 

China now allows a visa-free stopover for up to 144 hours. As we were planning to stay for only one night, we conveniently didn't have to get a visa to enter and stay in Beijing. So about 12 hours after leaving Heathrow we landed in Beijing.

The courtyard at Kelly's-our room on left

We made our way by taxi to our Beijing hotel; Kelly’s Courtyard. The hotel was small and lovely, with all rooms set around a central, covered courtyard.

Our room was not big but it was clean, and had a traditional feel. It was also well located as we found out later, but it was difficult to find it initially. 

Our taxi driver had no problems getting us to the right neighbourhood, but then drove down a very narrow and dark street. Then he stopped because the car wouldn't fit into the next street, which was a small and even darker lane. So he dropped us at the entrance to the lane, with an instruction to “go down there and turn left”.

"Go down there and turn left" said our Beijing driver!

Trustingly, we did that, and soon found Kelly's Courtyard hotel. Kelly’s is in Bingmasi Hutong. A hutong is a narrow alley or lane that is formed by lines of traditional courtyard houses. These days, hutongs have historic value, but they originally reflected the culture of grass-roots Beijingers.

The hotel owner was great at giving us information on getting to sights, so we went for a walk before it got too late.

We seemed to walk for many kilometres. First we were in small little hutong alleys then into slightly wider streets, then into bigger ones.

Small canal near Forbidden City

We passed the impressive Grand Canal (UNESCO) on the way into Beijing. Now we were walking alongside some of the smaller offshoot canals. It was lovely.

We saw a range of small buildings in the hutongs then bigger and grander ones, before seeing the Forbidden City and its 600 year old moat.

The Forbidden City is also called The Palace Museum and is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

 

Forbidden City West Gate (UNESCO)

It consists of huge walls within which are outer and inner courtyards. These are surrounded by a series of ancient wooden buildings dating back to the 15th century. It seemed to stretch forever and we learned later that it covers 180 acres.

We were too late to go into the various buildings within the complex, but nipped through the wall at the West Gate and walked through to the East Gate.

We felt this was enough to give us a bit of a sense of the size, and grandeur of it all. 

Forbidden City Watchtower (UNESCO)

By this time it was late and we were flagging, so we ended up at a restaurant just outside the Forbidden City gate for dinner.

Sugar levels restored after a nice meal and plenty of jasmine tea, we walked further looking for the Wangfujing St Night Market. Leigh had been to it on a previous trip and seen scorpions, crickets, and other like creatures cooked on a skewer and sold as snacks. 

We eventually found the street, but the food area has been closed down and replaced by a huge pedestrian area of up-market shops. Not necessarily an improvement we think!

The new Wangfujing St night market

It was just like being in any big European city, except for the people and the signage being Chinese. There were heaps of people out shopping and it was so late at night. 

By this time, 12 hours on a plane followed by a long walk, was really catching up with us, so we looked for a taxi to get us back to our hotel. This proved impossible as no taxi would stop for us. We sought help from a local hotel, but they told us there would be a wait of around 90 minutes.

So absolutely knackered, we walked the 6.5 km back to Kelly’s! We made it back through the hutongs ok and collapsed, having a good night’s sleep.

The next morning, our hotel arranged a driver to take us to the Great Wall of China.

The Great Wall of China (UNESCO)

After a long drag through thick traffic for 73 kms, we reached the Mitianyu section of The Wall, which has been restored. 

This section can be reached by climbing up many, many, many steps, or taking the cable car. It was a very humid 35 degrees Celsius - no prizes for guessing what we decided to do!

We started to get a view of The Wall as we walked to the cable car. Then as we headed upwards, it seemed to stretch forever across, up, and down the hills. 

It was an incredible sight; and exciting to actually walk on it.

The Great Wall of China (UNESCO)

We managed to see a number of watchtowers as well as a fortress which is where the soldiers would have lived.

There were very steep up and down bits built to follow the contours of the landscape, and you could see how this would have been a great defensive wall against the approaching enemies.

We felt that over the couple of hours we were there we got a good overview of The Wall, so we went back down in the cable-car to find our driver and the air-conditioned car.

On the way back to Beijing, we visited the Summer Palace which is a huge group of lakes, gardens and palaces.

Marg at the Summer Palace

We entered through the Western Gate and caught a little boat across a small lake, then transferred to another boat to go across a much bigger lake. This bigger body of water is called Lake Kunming. It covers about 2 square kilometres and is entirely man-made.

The boat trip gave us great views of the surrounding area, and provided a lovely breeze to stave off the heat.  

Off the boat, we walked our way around the lake and the many beautiful buildings in the Palace grounds.

There were lots of Chinese people out enjoying the Palace. We were definitely in the minority as we didn't spot many European faces.

Bridge and giant water lilies at the Summer Palace

We saw ancient buildings and bridges with lovely carvings and paintings, as we walked around the lake back to the car.

Even though it was getting late in the day it was still very hot, so the air-conditioned car was a welcome relief.

We got back to our hotel in time to cool down, before getting to the Beijing Airport for our late night flight to Auckland.

Tiananmen Square at night

Our route took us past the famous Tiananmen Square. It was getting dark by then, so everything was lit up. It looked lovely, although still formidable, given its huge size and history.  

We enjoyed our brief stop in Beijing. Marg hadn't been there before, and loved seeing some of the world-famous landmarks.

Leigh had been to Beijing twenty years ago and she couldn't believe the changes that had taken place since then. She felt it was much, much cleaner; no smog, despite the noticeable increase in motor-vehicle use (compared to 1000’s of bicycles back then).

Smog changes in Beijing: Left is 2004 - Right is 2019

We spent 6 weeks touring China in 2009 and it would be interesting to see if the many places we saw then, have changed as much as Beijing has.

Now it was time to head home. After a delay at Beijing Airport, we arrived back in Auckland, New Zealand. Then, after a dinner and wait at Auckland Airport, we finally caught our plane home to Wellington. We arrived tired but very happy with our whole trip through the UK, Ireland, Belgium and Luxembourg.

Us with motorhome Vtee - happy travellers

The hired campervan had worked out well, and we got such a good deal from Just Go Campervans.

We booked most of our campsites in advance, because we were there at peak time and during school holidays. The pre-booking was worthwhile as we didn't spend hours at the end of a long drive looking for a decent campsite like we did in Europe. Also, paying in advance for camps, helped to spread our costs.

We got to catch up with friends at the wedding in Dublin, and with family in London.

The route was great and we got to see just about everything on our list. We did miss a castle or two as we became ‘castled-out’ but are ok with that.

Favourite places: Top L to R-Dublin and Nthn Wales castles; Bottom Edinburgh and York

Our favourite places were Ireland, Northern Wales, England’s southern coastline, and Belgium. Favourite cities were Dublin, Edinburgh, and York.

The only downside was the rainy weather in the UK - it was not as we expected for summer. On the upside, Belgium, Luxembourg and Beijing were sunny and hot.

All up.....it was great.

We are now planning our next trip.....watch this space.    

This is part of a bigger blog on our travels around England, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, Belgium and Luxembourg. The first blog is called "Off to do the UK in a motorhome".