Advertisement
Just a quick note - its not letting us upload photo's at the moment so we will put these on another day. Probably after the Great Wall tomorrow!
Fear not blog fans - Broughton is ok!! It was extremely serious heat exhaustion that kept him down for a day or two but being the man that he is, he bounced back and is in fine form. He even managed to haggle some sunglasses off some random bloke after his broke. (and has finally bought a hat to wear in the sun - laura)
Friday 5th May - Princess Day (aka Laura’s birthday).
Laura: We had a lazy lie in and croissants for breakfast (I can’t believe we managed to get hold of some!) and then went to the Temple of Heaven for the day. It’s a really big park with a few temples, but more importantly it had space and lots of green areas! It was so nice to be in an open space where I felt I could breath fresh air again. There were so many Chinese tourists but we managed to keep away from the crowds, which was nice. The temples were quite impressive and
very colourful. We apperently ascended to heaven by walking through them, which was nice, although not quite what I pictured heaven to look like, with the 10000000 tourists!
In the evening we went to an acrobatics show. It was a bit random, in an old dusty building, down some back alley next to a big grand theatre (which I thought we were going to), but the show was brilliant. The average age of the acrobats was probably 10 and they can bend themselves into all sorts of crazy shapes. There were lots of American tourists in the theatre going ‘ooh’ ‘whoop’ ‘aaahhh’ like they were at a fireworks display. It was funny. The taxi driver was an amusing addition to the trip. We had to show him where to take us on a map and rather worryingly he had to get a magnifying glass out to read the size 14 font. And he was driving without glasses! It was like crazy taxi, I couldn’t look for most of the journey.
When we got back to the hostel we decided to order some drinks off the cocktail menu (we needed it after the hair raising journey) but none of
the waiters knew how to make them. After much deliberation, and getting the entire hotel staff involved, the barman presented us (grumpily) with our cocktails half an hour later! We stuck to beer after that…
All in all it was an amusing and fun day. And it was topped off, rather hilariously, with an overheard argument on the subject of who is ‘the best vocal talent in the world’. The choices narrowed down to Mariah Carey and Celine Dion. Suffice to say it got quite heated and was inconclusive, ending with one of the americans (obviously they were american) storming off to bed. We almost wet ourselves!
(By the way thanks for all the e-cards and messages I got for my birhtday. It was lovely to get such nice messages as I was missing everyone, being so far from home on my birthday. Also thanks to my family for the cards they gave me before I left)
Saturday 6th May
Paul: Well as Laura decided that it should be “Birthday Weekend” (which has now stretched to “Birthday Week” as we are off to the Great Wall on Monday), we went to a park for a picnic
as decided by her royal highness. Got a load of food from some random bread shop that we have found that seems to be very nice and hopped in a taxi to Beihai Park. I have to say it was a pretty good choice. The park was lovely if a little crowded. It is 80% water and the lake is man made with the mud that was pulled out of the ground made into a huge hill, where on top sits a white pagoda!
Climbed the taxing route to the top, stopping to watch a lot of random people praying to Buddha and whatever other bizarre religions they were practicing. I don’t think it would have been a good time to start telling people the merits of atheism. Got to the top and there were some stunning views.
In the evening we met up with our Irish friends (Caitriona and Bryan) and went out for a meal in what must be the spiciest place I have ever eaten. We MAYBE should have noticed the rather large Chillis outside but quite frankly I was still feeling the heat exhaustion so OBVIOUSLY I wasn’t at tip top form. Good meal
though with some beautiful egg fried rice all for about two pound fifty each. Not bad. Went back to the hostel and got pretty drunk and annoyed the barman again. His smug face is deserving of a slap before we leave I think. We’ll see though.
Sunday 7th May
Laura: A pretty dull day really. Got annoyed with the staff in the hostel because they wouldn’t feed us in the bar because there was a wedding in the restaurant (this wouldn’t happen in the Hotel Elizabeth!). Went to the train station and bought our tickets to Datong for Wednesday. Fortunately we had less of a palava getting tickets this time. Although now we are travelling in hard seats, no more 1st class for us (Trevor will be pleased!)
Great Wall Tomorrow! Can’t wait should be good. Hope everyone is ok, love you all!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.222s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 19; qc: 88; dbt: 0.1221s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
Andy
non-member comment
Please note that non Mario Kart fans should skip the 2nd sentence
We'll just have to imagine Paul's lovely bunch of coconuts then. See if you can jump over the great wall, I've heard if you do it right you cut half the course off.