4-Day Classic Beijing Tour

The 4-day classic Beijing tour is designed for tourists who come to visit China for the first time. It covers the most popular and typical places in Beijing, fully displaying the scenery, culture, history, local lifestyles and features, food and drinks, business, etc. for you.

Day 1:Arrival in Beijing

Your guide meets you at Capital Airport, and helps you check in at your hotel

Enjoy Beijing Duck as welcome dinner.

Accommodation: Beijing downtown

Day 2:The Great Wall & the Summer Palace

Start your day at the most famous part of the Great Wall, the Badaling Great Wall. Leave the downtown for the Great Wall at 8 am. Since it is a long drive to the Great Wall (about 2 hours' riding) have a break at the Jade Museum on the way. Lunch will be enjoyed in a local restaurant. In the early afternoon come back to the city and have a sightseeing tour of the Summer Palace.

Recommended Activity: Beijing Opera Show (Liyuan Theatre,19:30-21:10 every evening)

Accommodation: Beijing downtown

Day 3: Beijing city sightseeing & Local experience

Your guide meets you at the hotel at 8 am and set out for the day's touring: Tian'anmen Square and the Forbidden City.

After visiting the two sites, have a break and get ready forlunch.

Hutong visit: see some traditional arts of the old Beijing, suchas paper cutting and kite making, and visit a local family.

Accommodation: Beijing downtown

Day 4: Beijing Olympic sites

Visit the Olympic sites: Bird's Nest, Water Cube and OlympicPark, witnessing the fast developing modern China. Enjoy some free time after visiting the sites.

After lunch, it is shopping time and then the tour is over.

    Can technology improve your trip? Meet Judy Williams. When she and her husband recently checked into Blu Hotel in Zurich, a clerk asked them to sign the dotted line on a room rate hundreds of dollars higher than their online offer.

    “It was not a cheap stay,” says Williams, a lawyer from Billings, Mont. But it became more of one after her husband fired up the Booking.com app he'd used to book their room on his smart phone. “As soon as we showed him the cost, he honored it,” Williams says.

    Technology may create challenges for travelers but it can also solve them. It's more than making sure of a hotel cost. The latest Booking.com can help users select hotels by location, make a secure booking and view the confirmed (已确认的) cost so they never need to re-discuss their hotel price.

    Another pain point for travelers is traffic that eats away precious vacation time. There's a new app called Commute which is aimed at users who have to make the same trip every day. But if you're headed to Los Angeles or Honolulu, where visitors can easily get stuck in hours of heavy traffic, Commute can help.         

    Just input basic information about your destination and expected leaving time, and the app will start sending you traffic information 15 minutes before you leave. Testing Commute proved to be a challenge for me, because my home address is about 900 miles from my place of work. But if you have only a short distance to travel through a heavily populated area, you can use Commute to avoid traffic jams.

    Another source of travel-related problems is money. That's particularly true when you're dealing with a foreign currency. The latest Travel Money Tracker helps travelers prevent currency mix-ups. It immediately changes a country's native currency to yours, so you know exactly how much that Espresso (浓咖啡) in Milan costs in dollars. It can also warn you when you're overspending, which can sometimes be a problem when you're on vacation. The only catch, of course, is that you have to remember to record all your purchases.

    Taken together, these apps solve some of the most common travel problems. But not all of them. Some things, no smart phone can fix, which means I get to keep my job – for now at least.

    The effects of coffee consumption on health have long been a subject of conflict and uncertainty.Since the 1980s,some have spoken out against coffee as harmful to health,while others have welcomed coffee for its supposed benefits to health.

    According to a scientific report,mild coffee consumption,three to five cups per day,can he taken as a healthy dietary pattern,along with other healthful behaviors.The report also says that coffee consumption helps reduce the risk of heart disease and it protects against Parkinson's disease.

    According to Dr.Donald Hensrud of Mayo Clinic,high consumption of coffee has health risks.Dr.Hensrud mentions the dangers of high coffee consumption for people with a certain illness that slows the breakdown of caffeine in the body.Some studies said that drinking two or more cups of coffee daily can actually increase the risk of heart disease in these people.

    According to conclusions from a recent study led by Dr.Gregory Marcus,a doctor from the University of California San Francisco,daily moderate consumption of caffeine,less than 4 cups,is not associated with these issues.

    Until the scientific community reaches a general agreement on the effects of coffee consumption on human health,it will be up to the individual to decide whether the benefits of drinking coffee are greater than the risks.

    When informed of these possible health benefits and harms of drinking coffee,Harwood,a high school student stated,"Even though there might be some negative effects of drinking coffee,for the most part,coffee drinking sounds good for health.Not to mention I need coffee to stay awake."

    As we all know, there are plenty of different parks to visit in the UK. All theme parks in Britain have cafes, restaurants, picnic areas and gift shops, so you'll still have plenty to see and do when you and the kids have been on enough rides. There are usually smaller “funfair” rides and games as well, so younger children won't get bored. Several theme parks also have other attractions next to them, e.g. water parks often open all year round, unlike the theme parks.

    Whenever you are in Britain, there's likely to be a theme park within one or two hours'drive, bus ride or train journey. Several theme parks even have accommodation (膳宿) so you can stay for a day for two if you want to make a trip into a short holiday.

    Prices for UK theme parks vary considerably; some have an entrance price which allows you to go on all the rides, while in others you have to pay for every ride individually. It can also make a difference whether you go during peak time or not. For example, tickets always cost more during school holidays and weekends than they do during the weekdays.

    Theme parks always get very busy during the summer months, so if you don't like crowds it's usually a good idea to go earlier or later in the year!

    If you're thinking of visiting a UK theme park, it's worth having a look for special offers on tickets. Products such as chocolate bars and cereals sometimes have “buy one get one free” offers on theme park tickets, so keep a look out in shops and supermarkets.

B

    Cities usually have a good reason for being where they are, like a nearby port or river. People settle in these places because they are easy to get to and naturally suited to communications and trade. New York City, for example, is near a large harbour at the mouth of the Hudson River. Over 300 years its population grew gradually from 800 people to 8 million. But not all cities develop slowly over a long period of time. Boom towns grow from nothing almost overnight. In 1896, Dawson, Canada, was unmapped wilderness(荒野). But gold was discovered there in 1897, and two years later, it was one of the largest cities in the West, with a population of 30,000.

    Dawson did not have any of the natural conveniences of cities like London or Paris. People went there for gold. They travelled over snow-covered mountains and sailed hundreds of miles up icy rivers. The path to Dawson was covered with thirty feet of wet snow that could fall without warming. An avalanche(雪崩) once closed the path, killing 63 people. For many who made it to Dawson, however, the rewards were worth the difficult trip. Of the first 20,000 people who dug for gold, 4,000 got rich. About 100 of these stayed rich men for the rest of their lives.

    But no matter how rich they were, Dawson was never comfortable. Necessities like food and wood were very expensive. But soon, the gold that Dawson depended on had all been found. The city was crowded with disappointed people with no interest in settling down, and when they heard there were new gold discoveries in Alaska, they left Dawson City as quickly as they had come. Today, people still come and go — to see where the Canadian gold rush happened. Tourism is now the chief industry of Dawson City — its present population is 762.

    What's more exciting than having a fresh hot pizza delivered to your door?  How about having it brought to you by a robot?  Thanks to Domino's Robotic Unit or DRU, that just became a reality! On March 8, the three-foot tall robot delivered its first pizza to some lucky residents in Brisbane, Australia.

    The fully autonomous DRU is the result of cooperation between Domino's Pizza Australia and Marathon Robotics. The 450-pound machine that travels at a maximum speed of 12. 4 miles an hour can traverse a distance of up to 12 miles and back, before requiring to recharge the battery. LIDAR, a laser-based sensor technology similar to the one used in self-driving cars, enables DRU to detect and avoid obstacles, while traditional sensors, much like those used in vacuum robots ensure its path is safe as it heads to its destination.

    The robot can fit up to ten pizzas and even has a separate cold area to accommodate drink orders. To access their food, customers have to enter the unique code provided for them by the company. This not only ensures that they pick up the right pizza, but also prevents the pies from getting stolen.

    Scientists expect additional DRU's to be ready for service in their various Queensland locations within the next six months. But don't expect these super cute robots to replace humans anytime soon. According to Domino's the DRU still needs extensive testing, which the company believes could take up to two years.

    And then there is also the issue of regulations. The public use of autonomous vehicles is still banned in most countries. But Don Meij, the CEO and Managing Director of Domino's Pizza Australia New Zealand Ltd, is not worried. He is“confident that one day DRU will become an integral part of the Domino's family. ”