![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Read Day 1
Read Day 2
Read Day 3
Day 4
Our morning began with a long, expensive taxi ride to the Summer Palace which took us by the, then being built, Olympic stadium. The Summer Palace is a misnomer, of course, and actually is a giant park filled with temples, palaces, houses, stone boats, and natural beauty. This is a view out over one side of the main lake. (A close up on the buildings). It was also my birthday, as the park's weather forecast notes. A lot of people were at the palace enjoying the good weather. They carried supplies for picnics with giant bottles of sun tea slowly brewing at their sides. Everyone bunched up into crowds at all the famous places, and it quickly became clear that you'd need another day or two to see the whole place, so we picked a few things that looked interesting and gave them a go. First was entry into the dowager empress' summer house, where there was another massive opera stage. They put on a show of dancing and music using a few, long stringed instruments and oddly shaped bells (which can be seen behind the dancers). There was a (mostly boring) museum display inside of glassware and a few of the dowager empress' things, but we did have fun being extremely cheesy and dressing up as the empress to get our pictures taken.
Outside, we joined the crowds again, exploring random buildings and their pretty, if familiar decoration. This is the entrance to the longest covered walkway (in China? in the world? no idea). It was insanely crowded and we only made it several meters before we forced our way out of the crowd again and decided to climb the big hill towards the temples. I was getting a lot of looks btw because I'd decided to take advantage of not being in Japan to wear a tank top to combat the heat. Once we reached the top, we went inside the green and yellow temple at the top of the hill to see the Buddha (and cause it was cool temperature wise). Then we took some pics from above looking down on the tower of incense (which did have incense in it, we checked). From the tower, you could look down on the temple complex and the lake. Going down was much easier than going up and we soon found ourselves looking up at the tower instead, and enjoying the temple's beautiful courtyard. That was it for us and the Summer Palace.
Rather than have the taxi driver take us to the hostel, we had him go straight to the Pearl market, said to be a good place for cheap electronics and jewellery on the upper floors. We stuck to the lower ones. I bought a cheap mp3 player for ten dollars, and then went into hard bargaining for some of the more intricate silk robes in one of their shops. They were more expensive than Xi'an, but the fact that I bought three silk robes and that it was my birthday (that got me a set of silk purses thrown in) meant I still got an amazing deal, and supplied silk robes for my whole family (except for my dad who got a watch that projected the time and date with a laser on the wall). I half heartedly bargained for silk shoes (somehow getting an extra pair for free), then was talked into some pretty hair clips which they had to teach me to put in. Nish made some amazing deals as well, probably because we'd both noticed that the less you wanted something, the more likely you were to get it cheaply. Our taxi driver stiffed us on the way back, but oh well. We were dropped off in the main shopping area, and wandered around the mall, visiting an expensive tea shop, and noting that it was generally like every mall you ever visit. We ate this in the food court there (I'm not really sure what it is since we ordered by pointing). It was surprisingly spicy, but not bad. Of course, I'm fairly sure it's to blame for my food poisoning/illness once I got back to Japan, but oh well. We went to sleep early since we planned on accompanying a small group from our hostel heading to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall in the early morning.
Read Day 2
Read Day 3
Day 4
Our morning began with a long, expensive taxi ride to the Summer Palace which took us by the, then being built, Olympic stadium. The Summer Palace is a misnomer, of course, and actually is a giant park filled with temples, palaces, houses, stone boats, and natural beauty. This is a view out over one side of the main lake. (A close up on the buildings). It was also my birthday, as the park's weather forecast notes. A lot of people were at the palace enjoying the good weather. They carried supplies for picnics with giant bottles of sun tea slowly brewing at their sides. Everyone bunched up into crowds at all the famous places, and it quickly became clear that you'd need another day or two to see the whole place, so we picked a few things that looked interesting and gave them a go. First was entry into the dowager empress' summer house, where there was another massive opera stage. They put on a show of dancing and music using a few, long stringed instruments and oddly shaped bells (which can be seen behind the dancers). There was a (mostly boring) museum display inside of glassware and a few of the dowager empress' things, but we did have fun being extremely cheesy and dressing up as the empress to get our pictures taken.
Outside, we joined the crowds again, exploring random buildings and their pretty, if familiar decoration. This is the entrance to the longest covered walkway (in China? in the world? no idea). It was insanely crowded and we only made it several meters before we forced our way out of the crowd again and decided to climb the big hill towards the temples. I was getting a lot of looks btw because I'd decided to take advantage of not being in Japan to wear a tank top to combat the heat. Once we reached the top, we went inside the green and yellow temple at the top of the hill to see the Buddha (and cause it was cool temperature wise). Then we took some pics from above looking down on the tower of incense (which did have incense in it, we checked). From the tower, you could look down on the temple complex and the lake. Going down was much easier than going up and we soon found ourselves looking up at the tower instead, and enjoying the temple's beautiful courtyard. That was it for us and the Summer Palace.
Rather than have the taxi driver take us to the hostel, we had him go straight to the Pearl market, said to be a good place for cheap electronics and jewellery on the upper floors. We stuck to the lower ones. I bought a cheap mp3 player for ten dollars, and then went into hard bargaining for some of the more intricate silk robes in one of their shops. They were more expensive than Xi'an, but the fact that I bought three silk robes and that it was my birthday (that got me a set of silk purses thrown in) meant I still got an amazing deal, and supplied silk robes for my whole family (except for my dad who got a watch that projected the time and date with a laser on the wall). I half heartedly bargained for silk shoes (somehow getting an extra pair for free), then was talked into some pretty hair clips which they had to teach me to put in. Nish made some amazing deals as well, probably because we'd both noticed that the less you wanted something, the more likely you were to get it cheaply. Our taxi driver stiffed us on the way back, but oh well. We were dropped off in the main shopping area, and wandered around the mall, visiting an expensive tea shop, and noting that it was generally like every mall you ever visit. We ate this in the food court there (I'm not really sure what it is since we ordered by pointing). It was surprisingly spicy, but not bad. Of course, I'm fairly sure it's to blame for my food poisoning/illness once I got back to Japan, but oh well. We went to sleep early since we planned on accompanying a small group from our hostel heading to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall in the early morning.
