Drive-by Beijing & Tianjin

We didn't have much time for touristy adventures during our retail visits in Beijing & Tianjin. So I took all my tourist photos from the car on our way from point A to B. I apologize, but some were just too good not to post!

BEIJING

Here are my tourist pics of our first night in Beijing on the way to the airport… from the back of the van. Haha.

CCTV Building

Tiananmen

Tiananmen Square

TIANJIN

I really need to start researching these cities before I actually visit them! Turns out Tianjin is the 4^th largest city in China and was what some people called the “Beijing before Beijing.” The old downtown area used to be occupied by 8 different nations across Europe & Asia (Russian, British, Japanese, German, French, American, Austro-Hungarian, and Italian) which created the European style architecture seen everywhere today. It’s actually a quite beautiful city. However, our guide told us that no one lives in this beautiful area, it’s just the commercial district. Everyone lives outside the city center, which we also got to see… it’s less grand and more dusty construction?

Tianjin History: Courtesy of my favorite Wikipedia source. - also check this out for pics of the city at night. All the bridges along the river were lit up and absolutely beautiful! (my drive-by iPhone photos weren't event worth posting)

Here are my pics of Tianjin, again from the backseat, at least it was a sedan this time so I could roll down the window. :)

Quite a few churches in Tianjin

Tianjin train station

Churches in the middle of the train ride back to Beijing. Each were surrounded by small little towns.

RANDOM GOODIES

"Chinese food builds up body and soul" - obviously

There were some amazing cartoon street signs. I'm only sad I couldn't capture them all. (Good news though! This guy captured even more of them. They are amazing and good for a couple laughs. http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?p=101877965

Mona Lisa made of burnt toast. In a shopping mall.

If you don't have a face mask, just put your whole scarf over your face and hop on your bike!