Goodbye Beijing

---

So (somewhat sadly) this is our last day in Beijing!
We have packed in the Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, Great Wall of China, Summer Palace, Silk Market and Snack Street (more about that later) as well as tourings the labarynths of Hutong streets in search of bargains and historic buildings.

The Silk Market was so fantastic that we have been twice, and bought fans, parasols and beautiful pure silk items including scarves, ties and kimono style dressing gowns at ridiculously cheap prices XD. Bartering was great fun and we appreciated the air conditioning so much, reckon we might have settled for paying more if we'd been more hot and harassed!

Snack Street was also interesting, quintessential pagoda'd chinese buldings complete with lanters crammed with street stalls selling anything on a stick including frog, lizard, spider, sea urchin, crab and scorpions which were still wriggling! I got a sort of weirdly smoking and bubbling cup of iced tea which may have had dry ice in it but wasnt brave enough to dabble in anything more exotic.

But anyway, Beijing has been great and we are boarding an overnight train (13 hours!) to Shanghai so I guess we'll see what that urban sprawl is like =)
I'm actually pretty excited about the journey as its my first time on a sleeper train, I think im the only one though, everyone else seems to think it will be horrible!

Cat xxx

---

Photos

Snack Street
Anything and everything, and its all edible . . . in theory

Me pramcing about in my Silk Market Purchases
had to be done =P

Dragon Boat
Boat we took a triap across the lake in at the Summer Palace

Butterfly Painting
Painting of the Chinese character for longevity composed from butterflies (Forbidden City)