The entrance to the shopping district

There were SO many people (^^;

Chinese Häagen-Daz!  :3

This whole place was super touristy, but it had a lot of great shops.  We didn’t end up doing much here because I had a really bad rash (thanks, jean shorts) and had to hobble instead of walk.  We did eat Taiwanese fair food, though^^

A shopping district in Beijing

This is a pretty poor picture of the Chinese flag, but it was the best one I got (I only tried twice, but cut me some slack).  We got to watch it get raised^^  It was a big deal, I think

The sun

Idk exactly what this is, but when we were buying our bullet train tickets I saw it and I needed it on my camera

My first impression of Beijing was that it was dirty and dark and very ….blue.  Not like, “sad” blue, but the color of the city was just tinted blue.  It doesn’t come across very well in this picture.  However, you can see that the sky really just looks like smoggy nothing, and I think that that aspect contributed to the whole blue-tinted-city situation.

Honestly this is really just an awkward side-view of the athletic complex at the previous university.