We have arrived safely in Daqing and having an hours rest before a birthday tea for Harvey. The bottom picture is the school. It’s hugh, more like a university campus.
We were up at 6am for a 645 breakfast. We were collected at 8am (10pm Sunday UK time) and heading straight for the airport. We had an easy check in and a hour to relax before boarding. The flight was with KLM this time with a better selection of movies to get us through! The flight went over well. We were straight off that flight onto the next. See you in Newcastle. We would like to say a huge thank you to you parents for supporting this visit to China. We have made so many memories. Your sons are a credit to you all - we have enjoyed spending time with them and getting to know them more over the last 10 days. It’s been a blast! 🇨🇳
We had another early start this morning. After breakfast we visited The Summer Palace, which was basically a place for the emperor to go and chill out - his gardens. Now when I say gardens I mean a huge county park (probably bigger than Hyde Park) Peter told us that they started constructing this in 1750 and it wasn’t fully finished until 1850. It’s buildings included living quarters, Pagoda’s and a temple. The lake is man made and in warmer weather you can take the boats out. We then headed to the Pearl Factory, the lady spoke about where they come from, different types of pearls and how to tell if they are real or fake. It was then time for the Silk Alley. Peter talked us through how to barter for the goods we wanted. We had around 1.5 hours in here, spent quite a lot of Yuan and had so much fun. The prices they start at were laughable but what we are paid for some of the items was more funny! We then headed for our last meal together. We reflected on our last...
We had a great night sleep in our hotel. The breakfast included full English, cereals, fruit and pastries which was a welcome change to the traditional Chinese breakfast. At 830 we left and headed to Tianamen Square. It was being set up for an official ceremony as the Japanese Government had arrived for Congress. We then made our way to The Forbidden City. Peter spent lots of time talking us through the history of the Forbidden City, he told us about the different Dynasty’s and the reasons why the place was built. It was started in 1406 and was finished in 1420. The Emperor moved in in 1421 along with ‘his people’ who were farmers and produced enough food for the entire year. We spent a lot of time exploring the the vast grounds before spending a little time in the imperial gardens before heading to our next stop. Lots of the boys recognised the building from films they had watched. We headed straight to ...
Happy birthday Harvey have a great time and pleased you all have arrived safely xxxx
ReplyDeleteBy the way it's Darrens mam xxxx
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