Hong Kong & China

In China Andrew and I made plans to travel with Andrew and James from Hong Kong to Beijing and then to Shanghi. The ship didn't get cleared that morning until around 11, and the first thing we decided to do was go to a travel agency to get our rail passes for Japan that you can only get outside of the country. Then we met a friend of Andrew Green's who has been working in Hong Kong for 4 months and he took us to a good dim sum restaurant for lunch. The rest of the day we spent walking around the streets of Hong Kong, going in the shops and looking around the market. That evening we went to eat dinner at a place that I had read about that was famous for their Goose which was very delicious. The next morning we woke up and went to the peak tram which took us to the top of a mountain that had a great view of the city. We walked around the peak and ate lunch at a restaurant up there. After that we went back to the ship to pack our things and leave for the airport for our flight to Beijing at 5:00. I was impressed with how big and efficient the Hong Kong and Beijing airports were, everything went smoothly for us. Another thing was how quiet the airports were, no one seemed to talk, and it was kind of creepy.
After our 3 hour flight we arrived in Beijing and our driver picked us up and drove us to our hotel. Once at our hotel we ate dinner at the restaurant there and went to sleep to get some good rest for our big day tomorrow. The next morning our driver Tom picked us up at the hotel at 7:00 and we went to the Summer Palace. It was a giant complex with lots of temples and pagodas scattered around a lake. After just coming from India and Cambodia where we saw much more impressive temples, we were somewhat templed-out, and unimpressed with what we saw. We mostly watched and took
pictures of the massive sea of Chinese people walking around us. We ate lunch at a buffet by the palace and then headed to the Great Wall. We walked on the Great Wall for about 2 hours and took tons of pictures before riding a toboggan down to the bottom. At the bottom we walked around the market that was set up there and then we drove back to our hotel in Beijing. That evening we went to see an acrobatic show and we ate dinner at a duck restaurant. The next day we spent walking around the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. Later that evening around 6 we got a cab to the train station where we took a surprisingly nice overnight train to Shanghi.
We arrived in Shanghi at 7:00 and we got a cab immediately to where the ship was supposed to be docked but it wasn't there. After a confusing conversation with the port security they finally handed us a phone with someone on the other line who spoke English and they told us that the ship wasn't supposed to dock until later that night because of the heavy fog. Since we didn't want to be carrying our bags around with us all day we decided to get a hotel room. After we got our room we walked around the city all day and went to the shanghi museum. That evening we met up with Ben and Walker, who has been living in China for 7 months, and we went to a Cantonese restaurant to eat. It was nice to travel around with walker because he by now he can speak pretty good Chinese and that helped out a lot when ordering and getting around.
The next day Andrew and I walked around town some more by ourselves and found a place to get a cheese burger. We found a place where he could wirelessly connect to the internet on his i-phone so we could get the play by play on the NCAA national championship game. Since Kansas won, I won $345 on the bracket pool we made on the ship. We went back to the ship around 1 and unpacked our things and took a nap. About 2 hours later we met some friends on the ship and went out to eat and I couldn't help but to order another cheeseburger, I've gotten real tired of Asian food.