Beijing Continues Unabated

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Well we have had a few more action packed days in this amazing city. Its just so big. No matter where we go or what we do the scale just shocks. And it's heating up too, which cooks the pollution up nicely - we have been lucky though as its not humid which apparently makes the air like a soup. Nice.

Early on Thursday we went to Prince Gong's Gardens which were beautiful apart from the terrifying Chinese tour groups with their matching hats and leader with a flag who seem to push each other out of the way to get to the next place on the tour even though they are all travelling in one group! Had lunch with Sam which was wicked as we saw the CBD and caught up with her and learnt a couple of very useful mandarin words - I can now order this cucumber salad thing and typically hywel learnt the word for beef! then on to temple of heaven where we were roasted in the afternoon sun.

Yesterday we did a bit of old and new, starting in the very interesting Lama temple with its 18 m high buddha made from a single piece of wood and clouds of incense, on to the new shopping mall where we had some trendy 'fusion' food for lunch. There really are very few westerners here which combined with the language makes us really feel like travellers despite the McDonalds signs and the tacky mobile ringtones going off everywhere. Last night we had a few drinks out by Hou Hai lake which was awesome - a mixture of really nice bars and then really garish neon signs and huge screens with sofas outside to watch the football. beijing on a friday night....

Tonight we move hotels and join our tour which means going to the great wall which we are very excited about and then leaving Beijing for Xian on Monday night. Given the gargantuan size of our packs we are not looking forward to the "hard sleeper"....anyway here are some pics.
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