Subway Adventure on 08-08-08

Beijing had several new subway lines made for the hundreds of thousands of people attending the games. They are easy to use, clean, free with an event ticket, and a wonderful way to stay out of traffic. One can get to the venues as well as most tourist locations and shops.

Before the games there were only 2 subway lines and now there are 10 and all of the trains are brand new. I'm so happy for the 11-12 million people who live here in Beijing. It's mind-blowing to think that they think a city is "small" if it has 4 million people living in it. Talk about population density. Beijing is high-rise apartment after high-rise apartment.

The only mishap we had is when we wanted to go to the Forbidden City and without notification, the train skipped the stop that would have let us out right in front of it. Instead we had to walk a long distance and ended up walking on a crowded street with about, in our estimation, 70,000 other people. It was the day of the Opening Ceremonies. The Chinese businesses were closed that day and it seemed that everyone was enjoying the day with their families anticipating the beginning of the Olympics. Everywhere we walked, there were people who were selling temporary tatoos of the flag of China. People were buying flags and stickers. Olympic fever was in the air. It was the day the entire country was waiting and had dreamed about.

National pride was evident everwhere you looked.

Family just hang around tree-lined streets to enjoy a day out with each other. It was tough walking with the thousands of people on the street.

This was a newly reopened shopping street. Because it was a hot and humid day, we decided not to stop and look.

These are the lights in the subway line near our apartment. They make me smile. There are little details everywhere that remind you that Beijing is hosting the Summer Olympics.

Ira and Cheryl help me to navigate through the subway lines.

These are the some of the tiles that decorate the subway walls. They depict some cultural event.

This Olympic mosaic can be seen on the wall at the subway station by my apartment.

The trains have monitors that have Olympic events showing on them. This is a ping pong men's double's match.