Day 2: Beijing: Temple of the Lamas, Confucius Temple, Qianmen, Tiananmen Square
We landed at 9.30 in the morning after a flight to Beijing with a heavy stopover in London in which we slept in the end about two hours in total and that is that this type of daytime flights in the country of origin, are the worst to be able to face the first day of travel like today, we plan to approach the Temple of the Lamas in Beijing, among many other visits.
We arrive at the passport control area in Beijing at 10 am and as we approach, we see that the lines are endless, so we have to take it easy and wait for our turn.
We passed the control, Roger with a girl who had lived in Spain so they entertain themselves talking about the Easter holidays and once the control is over we see some panels that tell us that we have to take a train that will take us to the area of baggage claim
Just doing this already takes us practically an hour. Is this the first sign that China is huge?
How to have internet in China?If you want to have internet in China a good option is to buy one Holafly SIM card, with which you will have internet from the moment you land, several GB of data, keeping your WhatsApp number, Spanish support service in addition to VPN, so you do not have to worry about the censorship China and be able to connect to all applications and search engines.
You can buy your Holafly prepaid SIM card here with a 5% discount for being our reader.
We pick up the bags and go directly to the Bank of Chinese Agriculture where we see that the change is at 6.55RMB looking before changing the gearboxes that are right there and give us at most 6.25RMB per euro, so we go directly to the bank Without thinking much more.
Counting that tomorrow is Sunday we take the opportunity to exchange enough money until Monday that we will return to a bank, we have read that the best is the Bank of China, to see how the change is.
Today and after many more trips, we recommend you if you do not want to pay commissions when taking money from ATMs abroad and always have the current exchange, use the N26 card to pay and the Bnext and Revolut cards to get money in Cashiers They are the ones we use, They are free and will save you a lot.
You can find more information in this article about the best cards to travel without commissions.
With the money already changed, we go straight to AirPort Express to get to Beijing. Think that a taxi from Beijing airport to the center has an approximate cost of 350RMB and the Airport Express costs 25RMB per person, so it is worth and much worth opting for this form of transfer between the airport and Beijing. When you leave the baggage claim, everything is very well indicated, so you will have no problem reaching the area where the train is taken.
To get to our hotel in Beijing, the 161 Hotel, located in Lishi Hutong, we have to take the Airport Express, get off at Dongzhimen station and from there take the subway line 2 (navy blue line) to Yonghehong and here change to line 5 to Donsi.
Thus explained it may seem complicated, but we can assure you that it is as easy as the subway of any other city (think that all stations and cartels are written in both Chinese and English), you just have to be clear at which station you have to get off .
Beijing subway stations
The price of the standard metro ticket is 3RMB. The price calculation is done according to distance. When you go to get the ticket, if it is at the box office, you have to say the final stop, even if transfers are included, and if it is from the vending machine, you can choose English language and it is quite intuitive, it is done exactly the same, selecting the final stop Another thing to keep in mind is that the machines as a rule only accept coins and bills of 5 or 10RMB.
After our first metro experience on this trip to China for free, we arrived at Donsi after 12 in the morning and thanks to our inseparable CityMaps2Go we arrived at 161 Hotel in a few minutes.
Book your Airport⇆Pekín transfer here
Just look out the window of our room we see the stamp of the typical Chinese roofs of postcard that we wanted to see so much and we can not forget that we are staying in the center of a hutong, an alley that is part of the old town of the city of Beijing.
Views of the hutong where we stayed in Beijing
The idea is to go this afternoon to visit the Temple of the Lamas in Beijing. They close at 4 in the afternoon, so we have to take a quick shower, check that the VPN works to be able to be connected and work during this trip and go out to eat.
Right next to the hotel we have a McDonalds, so going as we go today, without having much time to choose from, we don't think too much and ask for a couple of menus that we eat in the blink of an eye to return to the Donsi metro station , where we took a couple of bills to the Yonghehong Station or Temple of the Lamas for 5RMB per person.
We arrive at three stops and just under 10 minutes, and just leaving we turn left and about 150 meters we find the entrance to the Temple of the Lamas in Beijing.
Entrance of the Temple of the Lamas in Beijing
We pay 25RMB per person, here they do not accept student card, and there we will meet and enjoy the first visit of our trip. You can book this ticket without queues in advance.
Here we will make a small paragraph to talk a little about thestudent card in China. Before going on a trip and while we were preparing for a trip to China for free, we read a bit of everything. From people who entered all places of tourist interest with the student card "legal"to people who had casting Library cards with photo without problem. If we take into account that the tickets in China are not especially economical and that the savings if you carry a student card is 30-40%, you can already imagine that we take in our portfolio, despite being expired for a couple of years.
Now and after the experience, we can say that in our case they have not accepted us in most places and we believe that they have already detected expired cards, library cards or identity cards with which many tourists went instead of the international card.
So we recommend that if you have an expired card or a library card, take it just in case, but do not take into account these discounts in the budget.
Book the best rated tours and excursions in Spanish from Beijing by travelers:
- Excursion to the Great Wall of China
- Beijing's Top 3 in one day
- Beijing contrasts
- Temple of Heaven and Summer Palace
- Acrobatic show at the Chaoyang Theater
- More excursions and tours here
We continue with the visit to Temple of the Lamas in Beijing. Upon entering we find an enclosure that impresses us, beautiful, colors difficult to describe, but very crowded.
Temple of the Lamas in Beijing
The Temple of the Lamas in Beijing It is the most famous Tibetan Buddhist temple outside the historical territory of Tibet.
We had read that if you can only visit a temple in Beijing, the ideal thing is that the chosen one is this, since its elaborate roofs, arches, frescoes and prayer rollers, form an especially captivating enclave, wrapped in clouds of incense.
Incense clouds in the Temple of the Lamas
This smell of incense, which we little expected to find here in China, transports us, unwittingly, to one of the many temples we enjoyed on our trip to Sri Lanka.
An hour or so is needed for this visit, without standing too much or devoting much time to details. If you want or have special interest, you should spend at least 2 or 3 hours.
Temple of the Lamas
After 4 pm we leave the Temple of the Lamas and we go to the Confucius Temple, located just opposite.
To get there we walk a very charming street, with shops to buy incense or Buddhist figures and we arrive at Confucius Temple where we pay 30RMB per person, here they only accept student card issued in years after 1991, and we enter another of the Beijing's most important temples.
Confucius Temple
Once inside we find a multitude of cypresses, which adorn the site. In the back we find 190 stone steles with figures and inscriptions that recall the 13 Confucius classics in 630000 Chinese characters. Although we find that it has less essence than the Temple of the Lamas in BeijingWe believe it is an essential visit if you are in the area.
After the visit and taking advantage of the fact that we passed by a cafeteria, we had a cappuccino coffee plus an American for 46RMB that gave us back the mood that we were losing when we had been sleeping for almost two days.
More practical information to prepare your trip to Beijing
- 50 things to see and do in Beijing
- 10 essential places to visit in China
- 10 essential tips for traveling to China
- The best travel insurance for China
The weather is very clear and hot, we have even had to stay in short sleeve at certain times. As we had seen in the weather forecasts, the weather corresponds to the spring of Spain.
With the batteries already charged we return to the Yonghehong subway stop to go to Qianmen on the same line 2. On this occasion, because we are closer, we pay 4RMB per person, following the price table we discussed above, being the ticket price superior according to the length of the journey.
In 8 stops we reach the area of Qianmen, a beautiful street, south of Tiananmen, full of shops and stores, where we can also find some of the Beijing's most authentic hutongs.
Today the idea is to know this area at night, at this time the sun begins to fall at 7 in the afternoon, and in the next few days return to know this area in the sunlight.
Streets of Qianmen at sunset
As we enter this area of the city, we notice a very significant change between the area of the Temple of the Lamas in Beijing, much quieter, and this area, with much more atmosphere.
We cross Qianmen Street and enter the occasional shop to get lost later by some of the adjacent streets, full of colorful restaurants and food stalls.
After a while walking in this area we go to the Tiananmen Square, where we are more than 15 minutes looking for the entrance, although it seems a lie and it is that at night, it is not easy to deduce where is the access to one of the most famous squares in the world. And once we found the access, we have to go through the security controls, which we thought were going to be much more tedious.
Tiananmen Square
At this time of night Tiananmen It is all illuminated, giving us a totally different image to the one we had seen in the different photographs when we were looking for information about the place.
Night falls in Tiananmen Square
We are not going to fool ourselves, we have not been sleeping for a day and after a long time touring the area, we are more tired than anything else, so we decided to end today and we go to the Tiananmen metro to catch again the subway, making a transfer to reach the Donsi stop, where we have our accommodation, the 161 Hotel.
Before we go to rest we stop at a restaurant that is right in front of us, where after several attempts, there is no one who understands any English, we ask for meat and chicken meatloaf, we believe, since we do not know exactly what type they have told us, since they are the ones that recommend us, and for the moment, the Chinese do not dominate it;), but we will say that as an accompaniment, to the main course, they were very good.
Second, we ask for a chicken dish, since they tell us that they have no lacquered duck, that they have several sauces, including a bowl of strawberry ice cream, which leaves us a little dumbfounded at this first approach to chinese cuisine. These dishes plus water for both of us, cost us 102RMB
Having dinner in Beijing
Once we pay and seeing that due to the rush of the waiters, it seems that they are closing, we choose to leave the desktop and go to the hotel.
The time has come to end this first day in Beijing.
Day 3: Beijing: The Temple of Heaven, Pearl Market, Drum Tower, Bell Tower, Qianhai Lake, Nanluogu Hutong, Suoyi Hutong, Wangfujing
