"A really pleasant surprise!" a Beijing Travel Page by piglet44

People had warned me about pollution, crowding , traffic etc in Beijing and so I was pleasantly surprised by the 5 days we spent there.I found the people to be incredibly warm and helpful,and the city to be easy to travel around , clean and no more polluted than many other cities I have visited.
We visited all the main sites- the Wall, the Temple of heaven, Lama Temple ,the hutongs and Forbidden City, the markets and the Summer Palace. WE only once got stuck in traffic when we took a taxi because we could not find the subway station, and got tired.But all in all we found the subway very cheap and easy , and it was enough to point at the map for people to help us to our destination. We enjoyed every minute of our visit there.
Maybe it was because of the Olympics but we found the place much cleaner than many western cities. And the fact that in the hutongs there are public toilets everywhere is something I wish we had at home! very useful...