Today was due to be a very busy day because we were visiting lots of sites all in one go. We started the day at Jingshan Park which was a 5 minute walk from the hotel. The top of the park was the highest point in Beijing at a whopping 89m above sea level! We walked through the park and into the North gate of the Forbidden City. At this point we had a little introduction to the City and then split up to explore ourselves. A few of us used our heads and stuck with the guide was a better tour ;). Once we reached the exit, we were hurried through to a restaurant for another buffet lunch. On leaving the restaurant, Rob realised that he had not seen his Dad for a few hours so started asking around. Turned out no-one had seen him and he was officially missing. The decision was made to continue on to Tiananmen Square and hope to find him on the way. Sure enough, there he was taking pictures of everything in sight at the Square! Phew!
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Once we had crossed the vast expanse of Tiananmen Square we got back on the buses and drove to the Temple of Heaven, another one of the Emperor’s haunts back in the day. Another very impressive building from the dynasties of China.
Next stop was the Pearl Market for a spot of shopping. This was very much like the Silk Market, so lots of fake goodies to be had by all. A number of the stalls were selling 900GB pen drives, now in the UK 3 weeks ago, the largest pen drive you could get was 64GB so Mark bargained the price down as much as possible to 90RMB (£9) so that he could investigate as he believed that, at least theoretically, it should be possible. But as yet it isn’t. The drive has been cleverly programmed to think it holds 900GB.
The evening spent at a Kung Fu Show (Legend of Kung Fu). This was an absolutely spectacular show, but again we were not allowed to take pictures so we bought the DVD instead. The dinner for the day was a local special, the dumpling dinner. It was ok, but after a couple of steamed dumplings you get a little sick of them. In this case it was plate after plate after plate of dumplings. Some very nice, some not so. Nevermind, it filled us up and was another interesting experience of Chinese Cuisine.