Beijing Zoo

Recently, we returned to Beijing in order to meet up with our guests who were traveling around China a little. We took the opportunity (only once) to go back to our favorite restaurant so that we could order and savour the spicy chicken and peanuts and we stayed at our favorite hotel. But really, the objective of the weekend was to hang out while checking out some familiar sites, and perhaps some new ones.

On the Saturday, we attempted to go to the Forbidden City. I say attempted because the crowds were so unbelievably huge that we decided not to push and shove our way trough the city for at least two hours. Instead, we walked across the street and walked around Tianan Men square and just missed making the line up to see the preserved body of Mr. Mao.



Instead, we decided to take the subway and then a cab to the Beijing Zoo. It was a nice sunny day, we were outside and the crowd was definitely smaller here. The zoo was new to us and the opportunity to see a live panda for the first time in my life, was too hard to pass up, so we went to visit them first. They were really hard to capture on camera. We did manage a few shots of them eating the proverbial bamboo. I was extremely surprised at their size. I had expected them to be more of the full adult brown bear size, or maybe even small grizzly bear size. Disappointment aside, they were pretty intriguing and it was not hard to watch them for a long time.



The rest of the zoo was pretty good too. There was an excellent collection of monkeys. We also watched a crew of window cleaners wash the inside portion of this giant raptor "cage"; occasionally one of the large golden eagles would swoop around the enclosure, and make the cleaning ladies duck and squeal. Mild entertainment while we drank a cold drink and sat down for awhile.