Travel Tip: Visit A City After The Olympics

Jason and I have decided that from now on we are going to visit the city that hosted the Olympics a few months after the Olympics. This is because the whole city has been cleaned up, spruced up, built up, and just plain tourist friendly.

I have never been to China so of course I have nothing to compare this trip to, but it seems as though China made a very good effort to make Beijing accessible to everyone.

Almost every sign and menu includes pictures and some English.

Everywhere you turn there is someone cleaning. Every bathroom has an attendant. On almost every city block there is someone sweeping and scrubbing something. Our hotel rooms are immaculate. At the hotel we are in now the cleaning people come in the morning and in the afternoon!

On top of that there are beautiful fountains and gardens that have been built in honor of the Olympics. The logo for this year’s Olympics appears in the formation of a bush, flowers, water, and so on. Again, there might have been a lot of greenery before, but it’s my impression that these flowers and shrubs were planted just for the Olympics.

China is so proud of having hosted the Olympics that there are signs and shops everywhere promoting the slogan (One World One Dream) and selling all kinds of t-shirts, toys, and gifts. At the very top of the Great Wall there was even someone selling “Gold Medals” that said: “I climbed the Great Wall.” Clever, I say. But we still didn’t buy one.

They even came up with characters to represent each of the Olympic rings. They call them “Fuwa” and if you say the names of each character together it means “Welcome to Beijing.”

This is a picture of a, a...I’m not really sure what this is, but we came across it at Tianamen Square our second day in Beijing. I would compare it to a parade float that just sits there. At night its lit up all pretty and everyone gathers around to take pictures. They’re cute. They’re like cartoon characters.

P.S.

This is a picture of Jason at a park near our hotel in Beijing. It has nothing to do with the Olympics, but I thought it was a good one.

P.P.S. If you want to see more pictures from our trip visit the Gallery up at the top of the page. There are also a few videos up too. You can find those under the Videos link.

P.P.P.S. On the top right hand side of the page you can see where we are at the moment. We haven’t been able to update the blog as often as we like, so at least this way you can know where in the world we are.