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Beijing
Well what a sleep after the confined surroundings of the train over the past couple of nights. I really enjoyed the train ride, good company and good fun but perhaps not an experienceI would wish to repeat. After breakfast in our Premier Level 12 lounge we headed off for the day's activities. Our guide is nothing short of annoying. She takes us to all these places and then rushes us through everything. I understand that she wants us to see a lot and for us not to miss out, however, there is no point in going somewhere when we can not even take a good look around. Anyway… we still have a good day.
Our first stop this morning was to Tiananmen Street. A local shopping district that also had the folk theatre. The folk theatre was an historical building where comedy shows, particularly about the countryside are shown. In the windows there were clay models of countryside settings in different seasons and times. They were amazing figures. The shopping street was very interesting with a range of shops from traditional tea shops to new chain stores such as H and M. We then
down to what is known as the 'Cultural Street'. A place where you will find the Chinese artists and calligraphers. We had a little look around but of course, were rushed along again.
From here we went to the Lama temple. This is a Tibetan temple in the heart of Beijing. It was converted to a temple in 1774 after serving as a residence for the Emperor Yong Zheng. There was so much incense in the air and really nice to connect with the Tibetan culture that we just left. Inside the temple was a Buddha that was 28m tall and had been carved out of a single sandalwood tree. It was very impressive and has a guiness world record status. Unfortunately we didn't get to see all of the halls for the temple, but it was enjoyable. After the temple and a walk through one of the hutongs, we then had a lunch of dumplings. Very cheap and very delicious. A definite highlight for the day.
From the dumpling lunch, we headed to the Confucius Temple which turned out to be closed. So we piled back into the car and went to the
drum tower. The drum tower was once the official time keeping place for the city. It was originally built in 1272 and burnt down, to be rebuilt in 1420. We climbed up a stair case that was more like a ladder to the top of the drum tower. You could see over Beijing from the top. It was a steep trip back down to the bottom again.
The next walk was by a lake where all the bars and the restaurants are. We really walked around and didn't really have time to sit and relax or look around. From there, we went back to Tiananmen Street for some afternoon shopping. Sharon and I found some great bargains to add to our enormous selection of things that I don't need. We also stopped at a shop called Donutes where we had coffee and after trying a range of different cakes, we had a rest and used the cleanest squatty potty in the universe.
We spent the evening eating junk, chatting to our Swedish friend Peter and a nice family from the Netherlands. We has a couple of glasses of wine and relaxed for
the evening.
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