Olympic Adventures

With the excitement of the Olympics all around us, we felt we had to try to attend an event--at least one! The only problem was that every single event was sold out. We looked online for tickets and came across a man on Craigslist who was selling two rowing tickets. "We'll take them!" we told him. We arranged the hand-off at a restaurant downtown. We were so thankful that we had these tickets and that he didn't charge us an arm and a leg for them. :) The following day, we headed to the water park at which the rowing events were to be held. It was a rainy day, but that didn't matter to us...we were too excited! We were going to an Olympic event! We arrived at the water park and entered the venue. Everyone was given yellow plastic ponchos, which came in quite handy later on.


The water park was impressive and the stands were full! Everyone cheered wildly for every race no matter which teams were competing.

Rowing fans

After the rowing event, we took a taxi back into town and headed to the Bird's Nest and Water Cube area. We had seen scalpers in the preceding days, and we hoped to find tickets for another event. It was our dream to attend an event at Olympic park so we could get closer to the Bird's Nest, Water Cube, and other venues (the water park had been quite a ways outside of Beijing). Fortunately, a Chinese man was trying to sell some fencing tickets since his friends couldn't go, and we jumped at the opportunity! Soon after buying the tickets from him we entered the park: we were in!! We were on cloud nine walking around all the venues. We had hoped for so long to 'get on the inside' and the time had finally come! We made our way to the Fencing Hall, which was not far from the Water Cube.

Fencing Hall

We watched three matches of Men's Individual Epee. Neither of us had ever watched fencing before, and it proved to be quite exciting! The venue felt small and intimate; we felt really close to the fencers as they fought.

Gold medal match

An Italian man won the event, and we stayed for the medal ceremoy. Then we explored the grounds! The Olympic Park contained a beautiful park, a stage with music, the National Indoor Stadium (for gymnastics events), and several other buildings in addition to the Bird's Nest and Water Cube as mentioned above. At one point we came across a room of Chinese volunteers, and they invited us to join them as they watched the much anticipated USA vs. China basketball game! They pulled up some chairs for us and we crowded around the TV cheering for our respective teams.


We stayed till half-time and then continued our exploratory journey around Olympic Park. We headed to our favorite area, that which contained the Bird's Nest, Water Cube, and Media Tower. We took several pictures and finally headed home around midnight. We watched the remainder of the basketball game with Ruling and then packed up most of our belongings. It was our last day in Beijing, and we were so sad to leave. It's been such a special trip, one that we'll never forget! And it was an unbelievable last day in Beijing! We're so thankful we had the opportunity to attend two events! :)