Beijing, the new version

 As you now know, we went to Beijing a little while ago. Here is my post about the new side of Beijing. I was so amazed at how modern it was, it had a better selection of brand name stores than New York. All the streets were very clean! There was even a Lego outlet store that I went to. But the coolest new places in Beijing were the Olympic sites. They were really well done. I'm sure all of you have seen them on TV, but I'll still show you some pictures of them anyways.

The Olympic sites were about an hour drive from central Beijing. The first site that we went to was the Water Cube. It was really cool looking from the outside:

 The bubble shapes on the outside were made from plastic filled with air like this:

Inside, I could not believe how high the diving boards were! This photo should give an idea:

I didn't get any good pictures of the lap pool because it was decorated for a concert. Other than these pools and a practice pool, there wasn't a lot in the Water Cube. Next we went to the Bird's Nest. On the way there I think I saw the CBC Beijing Olympics broadcasting studio. The Bird's Nest was very impressive:

Here is a close up picture of the design:

The Bird's Nest looked a bit small inside but in fact it could hold 91,000 spectators during the Olympics! Here is a picture of one of the mascots:

A picture of the track where World records were broken by Usain Bolt and others (not me!):

Also built for the Olympics was an extension of the Subway system. It was very nice. They also had some brand new trains going to the Great Wall:

  

The new airport was also very nice. The design of the roof is like a dragon's back.

(Did you find the Tech Decks in the last post?)

Bye

Jonathan

=P