From the airport, we jumped into a taxi and told the driver - The Great Wall Sheraton Hotel. He did not understand so I pulled up the address on my iPhone and tried to say the address - it's on North Dongsanhuan Road in the Chaoyang District. Hmmm...After 3 or 4 attempts of me no doubt butchering the address, he finally said "okay" but it was definitely an okay with a huge question mark! Either way, we were off! We didn't make it far before we hit Beijing's famous traffic. Before long we found out why it was slow going, one accident, then a few minutes later another one. I counted at least 5 accidents by the time we made it to the hotel. As the driver pulled off the freeway he points up to a building, and says something inaudible, but I did make out "ton" so I thought we were okay until I saw the sign on the building... Hilton - not Sheraton. I quickly pulled out my phone again to find the Sheraton's phone number for him to call and ask for directions. Luckily the Sheraton was only one more exit up the freeway - serious problem averted. 
Since it was only noon and our room was not yet ready, we headed up to the hotel's Chinese restaurant. We ordered the Peking duck. This dish is from Beijing so we were pretty sure that we couldn't go wrong. We knew we were in for a treat when the staff rolled a cart over and the chef came out to carve the duck in front of us and a waitress started making little mini wraps with duck, scallions, cucumbers and plum jam in a rice like tortilla. The real challenge was to eat them with the chopsticks. Then they asked us what we wanted them to make with the leftover duck...we chose the soup mostly because we really didn't understand what the other two options were. Luckily, it was pretty good.
That night we headed out to Dong Hua Men or "Walking Street" as the locals call it for the benefit of tourists. This street has a narrow alley filled with food stalls and souvenirs, but most locals don't go for the shopping - they go for the food. One of the first food stalls had what had drawn me to this place.. insects. When I read about this place in the guide book, I told myself I would try at least one, it wouldn't kill me. Well, after actually seeing the dried seahorse, caterpillar cocoons, tarantulas, and scorpions, I had second (and third and fourth!) thoughts!
Despite the stick through the scorpions, they are still alive - trust me, give that stick a little poke and that scorpion comes alive and starts wildly flinging its tail and more importantly its stinger around! Someone came up behind me and ordered a "scorpion on a stick" and the guy just threw it straight into the wok of hot oil to fry to perfection. Next to the insects was a "smoking drink,"not sure exactly what it was, but very strange. We passed on the critters but did enjoy some friend bananas.
We were drawn to two guys pounding away at a some nougat to be added to various nuts. As you can see they had plenty to choose from but we settled on the almonds.
After checking out the food and souvenir stalls, we did some window shopping on this large pedestrian street which had souvenir stores, clothing stores, shoe stores and of course the Apple store, which was surprisingly even bigger than the one in HK. Getting a taxi back to the hotel proved to be a bit of challenge, not finding one but finding one that was willing to turn on their meter - not just throw out fares to see what would stick (nearly all of which were at least twice the actual fare per the meter!) Who said the Chinese were not capitalists!
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