Beijing Roundup

Well, with the China tour now finished and pretty much everyone flying home on Monday, it was just me and Alan left in Beijing until Saturday. Luckily for us the hotel room is huge (so we can spread ourselves out), there is an internet place over the road, a bakery (which we visit at least twice a day, for brekkie and an afternoon cake) and supermarket next door and the Pearl Market, 5mins walk away.

With Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City and the Great Wall all checked off, we had to dust off our lonely planet guide to find out what else there was to see and do in Beijing.

Monday - Sleep, we'd had a very hard weekend so spent most of the day resting. Then in the late afternoon we decided we'd better go out for a little walk and maybe get a cake, but we stumbled into the Pearl Market and bought a little gadget for about £12 to watch our "genuine" dvd's on.

Tuesday - We went to the Temple of Heaven. The sky was quite clear so at the highest point in the temple, we could see for a couple of miles. Beijing has its own London Eye - I can't imagine what you would be able to see up there when its smoggy.

Wednesday - We spent most of the day getting our blog up to date, as we have been behind for quite a while now. We also went to the Pearl Market again and haggled for a few personal trinkets - Alan had to get a matching wooden samurai sword, but the woman recognised him and made him pay the same price as the first one. Oh and we got a cake!

Thursday - We have been out and about all day! We rode the underground to the Lama Temple, which is still a working Tibetan buddist monastery. It was very colourful and there were monks wandering around and lots of people praying. We found a huge shopping centre and had some really cheap but nice chinese food for lunch. And we got a cake!

Friday - Our last day in Beijing and the last day of the World Tour 2007 (part 1)! I was up at 5am because I wasn't very well, I woke Alan up and he went downstairs to find out if there was a Dr available and he was informed that this was a hotel not hospital. How rude!! Anyway in Beijing you can buy antibiotics for about 60p so he went out to get me some and came back with breakfast from the bakery as well - what a star.
The Pearl Market is like a magnet for Alan so once we had saved enough money for the taxi to the airport and dinner, we took our remaining yuan and went shopping. Alan drove a hard bargin but managed to convince this woman to sell him 2 webcams for £6.

We are coming home!