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Just after sunrise we woke to the beautiful sight go the great wall. Out of our tents and we could see the sun, through the mist, just above the peaks of the adjacent mountains. A pretty good way to wake up. We had all slept quite well and were pretty happy that we could tick off having slept on the great wall. We then packed up all of our camping equipment, the few things that we had actually taken up onto the wall, all of our rubbish and headed back down the steep dirt track to the restaurant/guest house for breakfast. Breakfast was a mix of egg plant, noodles, boiled egg and Chinese pie. Chinese pie is a bit like a toasted sandwich, only quite greasy.
Back into the mini van for the trip back to Beijing. We stopped at the Olympic Site from the Beijing 2008 Olympics. We saw the giant 'bird's nest stadium', the water cube, where the swimming was held and a wall that had engraved all the medal winners from the entire games. It was actually pretty interesting.
From the Olympic Park we went to the 'Summer Palace', so named because
it was the summer home of the Emperors before they were overthrown by Mao and the communist party. There is even a picture of Mao smiling and meeting up with the Emperor before he denounces him and makes him a gardener. I guess he should be thankful that he wasn't killed like many others during his reign.
The Palace was huge and the central point was an enormous lake. Apparently the lake was actually much smaller than it is now but the emperor dug a larger lake so that he could build a mountain to place a temple on. So he dug his hole for the lake and moved the dirt to where it was needed.The end result was fairly spectacular with an enormous lake, with boats putting around all over it and a beautiful temple standing proudly on top, overlooking the palace. The temple is known as the 'Hall of Benevelence and Longevity. There was a beautiful long corridor with paintings of buddhists temples. It's an outdoor corridor that goes for about 700metres. We caught a boat over to the small island called South Lake Island to see 'Dragon Hill Temple' and crossed the 17 arches
bridge. Named for it's 17 arches!.
We really didn't have enough time here to soak it all in and enjoy the place. Our guide always seems to be in a real hurry!
This afternoon was spent re checking into the hotel, showering and then heading for some last minute retail therapy at the Hutong. We spent up and had a good time getting last minute things. We had a drink on the roof terrace at a pretty restaurant and a man made me allying pig out of toffee! What was I going to do with a flying toffee pig? Tonight we had Beijing (Peking) Duck for dinner and a couple of drinks in the Premier Lounge. A good day.
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