4 days in Beijing - Tips before and during your trip

[Music] [Music] what's up everyone in this video we'll be going back to 2016 when my wife and I took a four day adventure in Beijing now four days may not seem like a lot of time but with some planning and taking an advantage of some good deals I was able to put together a pretty solid trip we're going on a trip to China there are three things I'd like to point out everyone is taking care of any passport or visa requirements and that involves a $140 application fee and actually handing in your application in person to a Chinese Embassy if you're not living near a Chinese embassy you will have to use some sort of visa service living here in Seattle we use the visa service to took care of pretty much everything for us guide us through the process and it costs around 250 per person number to be aware that China has a lot of censorship on the internet there are a lot of sites that you may use on a regular basis like Facebook Twitter who wouldn't be able to watch this videos in China if you were depending on using these sites to communicate you might want to find an alternative option number three a good amount of merchants will take credit cards but a lot of merchants say they prefer cash or just accept cash payments a few example of these were and some of the restaurants walking around the neighborhood was cash-only some of the coupon shops that we shopping for souvenirs took cash only and the most important one are the taxis you don't want to upset your taxi driver they prefer cash cash is king to them one sub tip is always take a taxi they're the most reliable to the safest and one time we didn't take a taxi and we paid for it more on that later for this trip we were able to book a five-night stay a t-shirt and R in Beijing dong Cheng Jota we use 70,000 star Woodford s points towards the Starwood nights and flights programs for you points in miles enthusiasts the redemption rate ended up being two point seven nine cents per point which is a really good rate for SPG if you want to find out more about the program check out the links below the hotel's pretty centrally located in beijing we were able to walk ten it's from Subway a little bit far but not too bad most the time we took taxis anyway the rooms were really clean and we had a really good view overall I really like our first day in Beijing happened to be on the Sunday so we thought it'd be a good idea to check out the Temple of Heaven and the surrounding Park area on Sunday morning this area is very lively there's a ton of people hanging out chatting with each other we came across this outdoor exercise area and it was just jam-packed with people doing their own workout of teens after seeing the Temple of Heaven and hanging out at the park for a while we took a subway to Tiananmen Square a lot of people come here to see this iconic place in Chinese history we walked with a herd of people under the gates with the huge Mao Zedong portrait and once inside there was just a ton of people waiting to get in line to enter the palace museum we didn't want to wait any longer so we just got a snack and then headed on to jingshan park just north of the Forbidden City is jingshan park there is a hike up to the top which is relatively easy it's pretty much just a lot of stairs you have to climb but once you get to the top the view is worth it you can look down and see all of the Forbidden City and on a clear day a lot of Beijing after a full day of sightseeing we worked up quite an appetite our hotel concierge recommended we try the pecking duck at doddling restaurant when we got there we ordered the duck and a couple of side dishes and they brought out the duck and served it to us tableside it was really juicy the duck fat was just so delicious and the duck meat was so tender this was my favorite meal in Beijing maybe even just the favorite experience that I had in Beijing decided to have great sections of why is its cost that separates rich the next day we spent the entire day hiking the great wall at the entrance our tour guide Miko explained a bit of the history of the Great Wall and along the way would go into detail about the different sections we would encounter we hiked the jinshanling part of the Great Wall it's advertised as less frosty and not that many people and that's pretty true we did not run into a lot of people along the way and it made for some great photo opportunities good movie the hike lasted about five to six hours we were very tired at the end good thing the tour included a nice meal at the end of the hike when we woke up from our nap after the hike we were pretty hungry again so we checked out a place called Valley on dumplings they're known for their colorful dumplings they make them with different kinds of vegetables that's what gives them their color overall a really great way to end our second day in Beijing [Music] our third day in Beijing started on that the Olympic Village which was pretty much a ghost town there are a lot of structures to see like the bird's nest stadium and the Water Cube but other than that there's not much else to do I do recommend you try the tasty yogurt treats at the bender stop wangfujing Street is a popular shopping area in Beijing you'll find a lot of modern stores that you can find almost anywhere in the world we went there for people watching and taking a look at some interesting treats at night we were able to catch a show at the Chiang Deeter and after the show we headed to San Nicktoons to enjoy live music and some late night drinks [Music] [Music] our last day in Beijing we took a cooking class from an organization called The Futon we learned how to make hand-pulled noodles in a tomato-based sauce I was not that successful at pulling the noodles but yeah at least I tried with one last night in Beijing we sought out to explore some shops and restaurants in a nearby futon by the time we got there it was just down pouring so I couldn't get a lot of footage we got soaked but we braved the storm and came across some interesting jewelry shops and small food shops overall Beijing was a great experience I've loved the food the culture I still can't get over how delicious that pecking duck was hiking the Great Wall was a bucket list signage that we got to check off so that was great even though we did a ton of things in China ate a lot of great food there were some things that we still missed out on we were just pretty tired after all the things we did pretty traumatized after almost getting beat up by a tricycle driver thanks for watching guys I hope this helps you plan your trip to Beijing and see you on the next adventure [Music]

Channel: Travel by SEA

Views: 19,594

Rating: 4.7268291 out of 5

Keywords: Beijing, Travel Guide, Starwood Preferred Guest, Sheraton Beijing, Armanna Travel, Travel by Sea, Couples Travel, The Hutong Cooking Class, Chaoyang Theater, Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Chinese Visa, Seattle Travel, Points Travel, Points and Miles, Beijing Taxi, Da Dong Beijing, Baoyuan Dumplings, Wangfujing Street, Tiantan, Temple of Heaven Park, Great Wall of China, Jinshanling, Sanlitun, Travel Planning, SPG, Jingshan Park, Hiking the Great Wall, Beijing Travel Guide

Id: e3VBPlRcLoo

Length: 10min 30sec (630 seconds)

Published: Sat May 19 2018