Great Wall of China

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(From Yesterday)
Hey,
I'm not used to the whole blogging thing and feel like a bit of a muppet! Anyway we moved from the New Dragon Youth Hostel to the Tianrui Inn and managed to get spectacularly lost in the three street journey, while carrying our luggage and in 35 degree heat! Which was entertaining to say the least.

The hotel was lovely when we got there though, Clare is most excited by the free flip-flops =D.

We spent the rest of today at the Temple of Heaven which was really interesting. The Temple of Heaven is where emperors of both the Ming and Qing dynasties made sacrifices and offerings to both Heaven and their ancestors. The iconic main building was for offerings of rice in hope of a bumper harvest but other sacrifices of animals and silks were made elsewhere, some in the burning altar.

The temple is set in beautiful grounds and we spent ages wandering the gardens and visiting the various pagodas, I’ve taken a video of a guy playing a Chinese stringed instrument with a bow which was a lot like a violin, might see if I can but myself one =)

Our group meeting tonight was cancelled as our tour guide’s train was late arriving, but me met him and a couple of other folk on our tour briefly this evening and will meet the rest tomorrow morning.

We went out to a completely non English speaking restaurant and ordered some stuff (including a sort of cold chicken thing (HOT), cold spinach, soggy noodles and a shrimp pancake thing) by pointing at pictures but had no idea what we were ordering =D We also went to a dumpling shop afterwards, where the staff had no idea what we were trying to order but the dumplings were really nice =)

Yesterday we visited the vast Forbidden City which served as the Imperial Palace to emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties. We saw many halls used for imperial ceremonies as well as a fantastic gallery of clocks, all with intricate moving parts.

The day before yesterday we toured the ancient hutong (streets) of Beijing including one which was restored to look as it did hundreds of years ago with classic Chinese architecture, which was fantasticly atmospheric =D We also had a look in lots of the wee shops which sold silk dresses, calligraphy materials and all other kinds of stuff.

The weather here has been incredibly hot, humid and sticky so we are sweating like nobody’s business and absolutely loving anywhere which is air conditioned =) but the heat is definitely bearable and worth it to be in Beijing!

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