Thursday 25th October 2018

We were up at 4am today to head to the airport for our flight to Beijing. After a straightforward flight we were collected by our tour guide Peter. He bought us a KFC for breakfast then we headed to the bus. We straight away noticed how much traffic was on the road. Peter told us that 24 million people live in this city with 5 million cars between them - that explains the traffic. We also noticed that many on the buildings were much more traditional Chinese to what we saw in Daqing.

Our first stop was The Olympic Village, the birds nest was very impressive - this was the athletics stadium in the 2008 olympics and holds 91,000. We also saw the water cube which was used for the swimming events along with the IBM headquarters which was built to look like a dragon. After a little bit of souvenir shopping we headed for Beijing Zoo.

It didn’t take us long get to The Pandas. There was 4 of them, they sleep for 18 hours a day so we were lucky to see two of  them awake. They didn’t look like they had much energy and they soon went back to sleep.

We then had an hour to have a wander around. We managed to see the brown bear, polar bears, monkeys and elephants. It wasn’t as well kept as other Zoo’s we had visited. We were shocked to see some of the tiny enclosures the animals were living in. We were very happy that the food stalls sold proper chips and smiley faces - they made some money out of us today.

Then we head to The Temple of Heaven. We learnt so much from our guide Peter. This place was built over 600 years ago by the then Emperor. He build it to pray for the weather to be good so that the country could have a good harvest. The temple itself is made completely out of wood and hand painted. It’s surreal to think we have walked the walk of an Emperor.

From here we crossed the way to the Tea House. The boys were rolling their eyes as we approached the old Chinese house however when we got in there it was a different story. We all sat around a large table and were presented with 5 different teas. The lady presenting showed us how to make ‘the perfect tea’, she allowed us to smell the leaves before tasting each of the teas. She also explained the benefits of each tea, some were good for the eyes, others for the skin, liver, kidneys and weight loss. She also showed us how to work out if your water was the correct temperature by using the naked man! We spent some time deciding which tea to buy before heading for our evening meal.

We visited a local Chinese restaurant and were served traditional cuisine (and fries!) we are getting very used to these spinning tables!  On the way to our hotel we experienced the craziness of The Beijing traffic....  how people survive the road on their scooters we do not know.

We checked into our hotel, chilled for a couple of hours then got our heads down to sleep for a fun filled day tomorrow!

‘So here we have it, Beijing. One of the most tourist attracted places in the world and it’s underneath our own two feet. What a great feeling’. Gabriel H

I will add photos later once I get my camera working!


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