Misadventuring Around Beijing

So, I’d love to tell you that I saw some incredible action today, but unfortunately, I did not. We had some tickets for this morning and this evening, but getting around here is still taking some getting used to. We had to head to willcall to pick up the tickets for our AM track & field, but the process of doing so took quite a while. So much so that we ended up missing our actual event. Well done. Now, we had a lot of time to kill in between the end of that event and our evening field hockey. So we headed back to the hotel.

I spent a long time working my way through the great firewall of China in an effort to secure tickets for the end of the week. A note to those wondering, getting tickets has been crazy. The fact that it takes a million hours to do anything because of the traffic restriction on the net doesn’t help. Anyway, we set out to take the subway, which is supposedly efficient. Combined with some misinformation, it ended up taking us… Well, let’s just say that after two hours, we still hadn’t made it to the venue. There were a great deal of miscues on our part, but I’m astounded by how little people seem to know about how to get around. The simple question of “what is the best way to get to this venue?” is something that I thought ought to be easily answered, but so far doesn’t seem to be.

There are a ton of volunteers, which is nice, except that you can’t really get any help with anything other than a direct question like, “where is the toilet?” So we’ve got some full days ahead that will definitely require some planning. But the #1 rule so far is take a cab EVERYWHERE. Even if you are sitting in traffic, it beats standing on the subway, which is not particularly speedy and is always very full.

On the bright side, the venues themselves are amazing. I actually really had a great time walking all over the place today. I do wish I’d seen some events, but just seeing the venues was pretty spectacular. It was really a learning experience. After watching rowing yesterday, I was sort of spoiled because that venue is in the boondocks. Ironically, we traded away our kayak tickets because we didn’t want to head back out there because it was “too far.” Uhm, right… Anyway, we have a pretty strong lineup of tickets, and I think we actually have a sense of how to get there, timing to get places (allow two hours to get anywhere), and take a cab. Always take a cab.

I have a bunch of photos that I’ll be posting, but it’s rather late after a long day. I’m very excited for the men’s triathlon tomorrow morning. My boys should put on a show! So I’ll kick off the photo journal with what will hopefully be some stellar photos from that race.