China continued...

Hi Everyone,

I've come prepared this time, I'm wearing gloves!

Right yesterday we got up at 9ish and headed down to try the hotels
'continental breakfast' which was an interesting interpretation of
continental, brioche bread (all bread in beijing sees to be brioche) for
toast and croissants which are definitely not like french croissants, with
coffee and tea. It was nice though! We were treated to the european tmf
channel which seems to like playing eurovision 'hits' most of the time!

After that we headed down to tian'anmen square via hoi hai again. It took
us about an 1hr to walk down there but we did get to walk past jingshan
park and the forbidden city. Tian'anmen square was cool but pretty much
just a very large space, whats interesting is what its surrounded by, the
forbidden city, mao's mausoleum, the great hall of the people and the
museum of chinese history and the revolution. We just took a walk around
because of the odd opening hours (quite italian - they break for lunch),
we are going to go back to see the mausoleum etc tomorrow.

From there we took a wander down to part of the shopping district to find
some lunch, this took ages (although I did get a travel hair dryer for 2
pounds) we even considered (in our desperation) having a kfc, however I
was  put off by this because of the guilt of being in china and eating
that: I think m and d are to blame for that!!! lol! We finally found a
small shopping street with a restaurant on it, this was lovely! We had
pork dumplings (which were better than the first ones we had) followed by
chicken and cashew nuts and scallops and cucumber. I enjoyed this but not
as much as the egg plant and brocolli! We finished with unfiltered tea
which was lovely. We have been drinking a lot of Tsingtao beer which is
brewed in Beijing! Its really good!

We then got a taxi back to hoi hai for a drink. The taxi was weird we went
to get one and we got turned away and then we ended up bartering for one
with a taxi driver who after we had agreed the price flagged down another
taxi and got that taxi driver to take us! Still not sure what happened
there!!! After Hoi Hai we had a quick snack dinner in a bar called Pass By
Bar, that was really nice and on a street that was filled with loads of
bars, its around the corner from our hotel so we are going to go back!

Today was a big day, we had breakfast while listening to avril lavigue,
who is very big out here! We asked the receptionist to write down
instructions for a taxi driver to take us to the forbidden city, in the
end we did not need them because the taxi driver spoke a bit of english!
He (rather embarrassingly for Rob considering his degree) taught us how
tall big ben was and how old the tower of london was. He was also very
into sherlock holmes and kept saying 221 baker street! He also told us a
bit about Beijing history. He kept pointing to his cassette player, I read
that alot of the taxi drivers were given tapes to learn english and about
england in the run up to the olympics, I think he might have got some of
his facts from that! He was really nice though and the journey cost us a
quid!

We saw the forbidden city which was vast and very impressive, although I
don't think its as good as the alhambra, although some parts of it were
really really beautiful. From there we headed to Jingshan park which I
LOVED!!! We walked up to the top of it through pavillions with that the
most amazing names such as 'wonder appreciation pavilion', 'eye feasting
pavilion' and 'all round view pavilion'. The top had the most amazing
views of the whole of Beijing!!! It was the best 16p we have ever spent!

From there we went to Beihai park, this went up just lower than Jingshan
but had great views of the lakes and the descent was though really
interesting caveish structures, they are really hard to describe.

I've decided that Beijing is not a really attractive city although it has
its moments, the architecture is amazing though. Also the chinese really
really love there small dogs!!! I have not seen one large dog yet!

I'm going to go to dinner now. I've added some photos, but just a random
selection, so not necessarily the best ones! It would have taken ages to
add all the 422 that i've taken so far! lol!

They are linked to the blog at www.rswt2008.blogspot.com

Lots of Love,

Sarah xxx