Early Morning

To recap the start of our trip:

We got up on Tuesday October 2nd at 4:00am (Georgia time)and started our day of travel. None of us really slept on the plane.  I think that the girls maybe took a two hour nap.  We arrived in Beijing at 2:40 pm. (That means 2:20am on October 3rd Georgia time).

So when Rachel crashed at 5:00pm (5:00am - Georgia time) I thought we were ok.  That is over 24 hours with no sleep.

The rest of this is in our current time(Beijing time).

Rachel crashed at 5:00pm last night while eating her McDonald's cheeseburger, so we carried her and got back to the hotel at 6:00pm where everyone else went to sleep shortly after that.

At 10:00 pm Rachel was ready to get up. She got up, went to the window and opened the blinds.  There were still people out and shopping on the street.  We got her back to sleep, but then we were up again at 1:30am. We went back to sleep again but that didn't last long.  Now we are all awake at 3:30am Beijing time.  This is gonna be a long day.

We picked out our clothes and played a bit.

Made some breakfast.

Heated up airplane rolls with hot water from the hot pot.

 

We did some schoolwork.

Then we all got showered and dressed.  It was 6:30 in the morning.

We walked back down to Wanfujing Street. 

 

It was a beautiful, cool morning.  We were able to see the city wake up.  People were walking and riding bicycles to work.  The shops were not open yet, but there were a few places places that had begun to serve breakfast.  There were people outside eating and talking.  We walked further down to the end of the street, where there is a street vendor market. 

 

 

 

Here we saw lots of interesting sites.   It is basically a narrow alley with vendors that sell many different things like chopsticks, toys, and jewelry. 

Then, there is an area were vendors were cooking several types of local foods.  Most of these would be served on a stick for the ease of eating it on the go.

I thought that this place was only open at night, but the people began to come and get the foods ready.  The place was busy in just a matter of minutes.

The foods looked quite good, lots of noodles and fresh greens and vegetables.  There were some small tables were you could sit and eat.  

Then there were some more exotic dishes.   These were the grilled items that were served on skewers.

These are candied friuts.  They put the fruit on a stick and then dip it in boiling sugar.  The green ones are grapes.

 

  

There were starfish and seahorses.  

 

The most popular were the scorpions.

The scorpions were still alive and moving on the sticks, waiting to be placed on the grill.  Once grilled, they were immediately eaten and enjoyed.  

 

 

The only thing that we purchased was some candy.  The lady kept opening the candies and telling Elise to try them.  The lady kept having her try so many different candies because she wanted us to  purchase them.  It worked.  We had a small bag full for her to weigh. It reminded me of River Street in downtown Savannah, where you can buy a Tootsie Roll lollipop for $2.00.  

We paid $4.00 for the four of us to eat breakfast and $17.00 for a small bag of candy!