Beijing Day 3 and 4-Tiannamen, The Forbidden City and How I got jacked out of 500 Yaan

Day 3 was another tour. We went to Tiannamen Square and the Forbidden City. Tiannamen Square was cool with some good pic opportunities. We decided to start counting the number of people who took photos with us or took our photos discreetly for the trip because so many were doing it there. (Current count 30). Then we went to the Forbidden City. Though the buildings are impressive it's was too big to really enjoy. It really is a city. It seemed miles long. We saw maybe one tenth of it. The insides are fairly well preserved (You have to look into the windows to see it) , but the heavy traffic has taken a toll on the outside. Plus weather. It needs restoration, but in China's defense it's hard to restore a building with 99000 1/2 rooms. But it is impressive and amazing to behold. After we went to some old Beijing neighborhood with some interesting houses. We even got to go inside one. However the old neighborhood was in the Lake District which we went to on the first night so we did not linger. The day ended with Chinese Opera which was pretty bad. A lot of screeching and wailing with some acrobatics thrown in. I could barely stay awake. All the walking through TS and TFC had worn me down. I slept as soon as my head hit the pillow.
Day 4 was a painful day for me. We didn't do any tours and decided to shop at a market. The market was 4 floors of stalls with bootleg items. The sales people were super aggressive. I decided to go off by myself for the first hour. It was a mistake. A BIG MISTAKE. See Cierra is haggle central. She's the greatest haggler in the world. I on the other hand am too nice. I bought one pair of shoes for $500 Yaan (70 bucks) Cierra bought the SAME SHOE for $60 Yaan (7 dollars) Thats right I paid TEN TIMES as much as she did. Not only that I had haggled to get that $500 Yaan. I felt as I walked away that I got ganked. I then saw some Chanel watches (on my list to buy) but I couldn't get the lady to haggle down. Once you buy something at a crazy price they tell the others. And they tell how much you have in your wallet. Well when we met up again we stayed together. Cierra did all my haggling. I got some bootleg coach that I had to sneak into a dark stairwell to look at. Cierra did great. Strangers were asking her to haggle for them. It was awesome. In the evening we FINALLY saw our first olympic event TRACK. US is great in track. The first thing we saw was a medal ceremony from an earlier event where the US had swept the medals. We had small medium and giant flags and we waved and sang. I cheered for my back up team of Jamaica because they were in a lot of the prelim events. I got to see the fastest man U. Bolt who won the 100m in the 200m prelim. He smoked them (but US qualified so who knows in final--UPDATE-He smoked them in the final too). The US qualified in almost everything we saw. We saw things like high jump and discus finals with no americans. We also got to see some US hurdles woman bronze and US 400m womans gold. The event started and ended with the US anthem. The birds nest stadium which should be called the Sauna stadium was crazy hot. Our seats were high but excellent. I am so glad we bought our tickets way early. The prices some of those people paid were insane. I will not be going back to the birds nest but Cierra and Cherise will go to the relays. Oh during the last US anthem at the end we sang out really loudly. People were looking at us but who cares. The Chinese volunteers took photos. They also congratulates us on our victories. Several Chinese did. I think they are jealous of the US's track success. There main (and only) track star is out injured. U.S.A.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!