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Published: September 16th 2007
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We were up early (ish) and after breakfast we headed on down to the forbidden city. We knew the way by now as it is situated at the top end of Tianemen square. As we arrived we could see that it was packed full of tour groups all bustling to get to the entrance and once we barged our way through the gate it opened out into another large square, interestingly with 2 basketball courts in it. Thankfully it was a large area so the groups dispersed as we made our way to buy our entrance tickets. Tickets bought and map in hand we entered the "now not so" forbidden city. The city as a whole is realy impressive and as we made our way through we got a real feel as to what it must have been like to be privilaged to live within the walls. The buildings are magnificent and Lisa has taken great pleasure in taking loads and loads of "arty" photos of the place. It was a bit of a shame that they were in the process of restoring many of the buildings as it mant that there was scafolding everywhere but i guess they need to
get it ready for the influx of tourists with the Olympics just around the corner. We continued through the city and once we reached the far end it was a nice change to be in a courtyard garden with some lovely old trees (kind of like large bonsai trees) as we were a bit "nice old chinese building'd" out by then. We doubled back on ourselves a bit and ended walking down some narrow streets within the walls which was nice as there were very few people there, i guess the tour groups stick to the big things. Once we reached the end we felt we had seen enough so we left from the furthest entrance to avoid the crowds. This was one of our better ideas as just across the road was a park of course with an entrence fee, so i dug deep into my pocket and handed over the 20p and we were in. It was nice strolling through the peace and quiet of the park until we could here some kind of pop music (we think it was the venga boys) and we imagined some kind of dance off between rival gangs. How wrong could we
have been, it was a group of old people (please make your own judgemnent to how old old is as not to offend) doing some kind of barmy line dancing, i guess they do it to keep fit but it is not the Tai Chi i had expected, welcome to modern China! We strolled further through the park then wound our way up the hill that was in the middle to see the view from the pagoda at the top. Once at the top you got a realy good view of the forbidden city and a better perspective of where we had just been. It was realy interesting having the forbidden city on one side of the hill and then Hi-rise indusrtrial Beijing on the other. After sitting for a while and doing my bit for Chinese tourism by filling in a questionnaire it was time to head back to our hostel for a shower and changed as we were off out for some fod and drink with Ant & Lisa. We met up and decided to head to the night market whee they have stalls full of different types of food, most of it bbq'd. You could also get
squewered scorpion! We eventually opted for a sit down meal at one of the outside restaurants in the market which was super tasty then we headed off to meet what was left of the train group for a drink. This turned out to be a bit of a hike and when we go there it also turned out to be a bit of a hike in beer prices too. However the setting was beautiful by the lake and was ealy nice watching people set off the paper lanterns into the night sky over the lake......priceless. We were shattered so decided to say our final goodbyes to most, and headed off in a taxi to our hostel for a well earned sleep ready for the next days adventure......the summer palace.
After a morning spent blogging and emailing we made our way by metro and taxi to the summer palace. The summer palace was created in the 1100's and was used for royals as a place for rest and entertainment. It is built around a lake (Kunming lake) and is carved into the mountainside for it's spectacular views and protection from invaders. Once we arrived at the lake it was nice
and quiet and once inside it's walls it was easy to get lost through the winding paths and amazing amount of pagodas and buildings. It was stunning and with the trees offering some shade from the blistering heat we managed to walk to the highest point to get the best view. We spent the rest of the afternoon just wandering aimlessly and we took a boat ride on the lake to get a best 360deg view which was well worth it. Once we had finished wandering we thought it would be a good idea to walk to a local shopping centre as we had heard mythical tales of a cheap North Face shop. We did however forget the maping scale they use and about 2 hrs of walking ensued. We did find the shopping centre and the North Face shop but it was such a let down. Hardly any stock and western prices...oh well the walk did us good and we found ourselves right by the metro home (the hostel). Once back we had a quiet meal and then early to bed as the next day was the challenging 10K walk on the Great Wall......we have never done so much
walking!!!!!!!
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