Day 3 - Temple of Heaven, Silk Market & Peking Duck

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What a busy day we have had today...

Started off with yet another big breakfast although I opted to skip the waffles with chocolate sauce this morning to be a little healthier. We then headed off to the Temple of Heaven, $30￥, which was amazing. The buildings are beautiful and we saw some interesting dancing in the park area's. Well it was more like swaying with your arms going up and down - quite funny! We were also lucky (if you could call it that) to have it snow for a little while we were there!

We then headed off to the China World Tower to meet and have lunch with some of Tamara's business associates from Telstra/Sensis. They were really lovely and all spoke English very well. We had a wide selection of food at lunch and tried a bit of everything including, marinated radish, tofu noodles, Lilly root, sweet rice, shanghai noodles, dumplings, pork balls, sweet & sour fried fish, duck in buns, etc.

We had planned to go to the Happy Valley theme park after lunch but it was FREEZING (literally) so we walked down to the Silk Market. OMG, it is huge, puts the Victoria Market to shame - haha. We saw 2 full levels and a bit of another and we know there are at least 8 so we are going to go back for more. We only left as we ran out of arms to carry shopping and also ran out of the money we were carrying on us. We learnt very quickly how to barter and we have become quite good at it, if I do say so myself. For example, I found a Jacket I liked and the guy offered $1500￥, I counter offered $30 which sounds crazy but I got the jacket for $50￥ which is approx. $9AU. We bought so much we had to buy big zip up black bags to carry everything. Then as we were leaving we both bought carry on luggage bags, wheels/handles and all. They are great looking and were only $80￥/$15AU. The shop keepers call out to you at EVERY shop, "pretty girls", beautiful ladies", Tamara even got "Princess". They also grab you and touch you all the time - a little annoying after a while. They also chase you to get a sale which is where we got the bargains!

We have just got home from a Fantastic Peking Duck Dinner at a world famous duck restaurant. I haven't had Peking duck before but it was YUM. I even attempted to eat duck tongue. We also had Duck Soup, Prawn Dumplings and Fried Rice with Duck. All up $233￥, $43AU - so cheap!!! We walked to an from this restaurant as it's not far from our hotel but it was Freezing. It was 0 degrees at the time but felt colder.

On a side note, we have both now experienced the traditional Chinese Squat toilets - hmmmmmm.....what more can i say......interesting!!! Also another thing is that we are experiencing fame here in China. People want to talk to us, stare at us and take photo's all the time - it's crazy!

Well, off to bed now as we are on a tour tomorrow!

Night xo

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