Well well, Jenny here!!! Today we had to get up for a 7 o'clock breakfast, for a 8 o'clock departure to Tiananmen square, the Forbidden city and Wangfujing. Tiananmen square was packed!! Aswell as not moving very much due to the crowds there were people trying to sell watches, postcards, stamps and fans to us as we went by them then they even followed us for a bit! After walking about the square and hearing about it and taking pictures of places we went into the Forbidden city which I thought was extrememly interesting. All the rooves to the buildings were painted gold and the red walls with the grey bricked courtyard made the whole place very pretty for the pictures everyone was taking. Again as we left, we were bombarded with items people were trying to sell on the street. We took a wonder to the bus and drove to a restaurant as we were all starving. The restaurant was nice and very chinesey with red lanterns and pictures on the walls and the round spining disks on the tables for the food. We had some kind of fish thing with what we thought was legs! Pork, beef, chicken, vegetables served in a variety of ways and aubergine and tea which is really different from the tea I'm used to! After we had our fill, we got back onto the bus and were taken to Wangfujing, a huge street with lots of shops and markets, a girls dream! The shops were nice and there were a good few shopping centers that you could buy souveirners and gifts like fans and chopsticks and so on. The silk shop was lovely, everyone who went in was tempted to buy something but not all of us did. The market was...well I will say amusing in some sort of sense because as we walked through in between the stalls, sellers grabbed at our arms and tried to persuade us to buy stuff, and when we walked away they lowered the price to try get us to come back! We also had Stone with us to help us translate. We all then met up outside a HUGE department store, very similar to Debenhams, and decided what we were all going to do. Mrs McCulloch, Lindsay and myself decided to go back to the High school because we were tired and didn't particularly want to walk about much longer while the others went to the night market with the weird and strange looking foods.
Right Laura and Lynsey here (dangerous mixture!!) Well while the others went back to the High School we went to a nice wee Chinese restaurant with Stone and his friend Sylvia. After some time we finally managed to pick a few dishes which look as if we'd like them... and we certainly did! They were yummy! Probably the best food we've had so far. After our munch we went for a stroll through the Night Market, which was certainly, lets just say, interesting. We decided that beetles and cow intestines on a stick weren't for us and avoided buying anything. The starfish was tempting though?! Anyhoo that was all dandy and Stone and Sylvia were nice enough to flag done a couple of extremly non-pricey taxi's (£2 for like an hour!) and we made our way swiftly and rather dangerously weaving in and out the trafic back to the campus. Overall it was a rather spiffing day and was thouroughly enjoyed by all. Byeeeeeeee L + L xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx =)
Okay with 180 photos from today alone I can't possibly download them all so will give you a flavour! And will put some in albums on the right.
Entrance to Forbidden City
Market stall
Night market
Parasols
Getting more envious daily.
Love the updates, keep them coming and the photos, thank you
Heather
Posted by: heather | July 19, 2006 at 02:26 PM
have enjoyed all the info so far can't wait for next installment!! mike says if you change your mind abot the intestines he'll see what he can do!!!!
Posted by: Lilian | July 19, 2006 at 05:05 PM
Hi All,
Day 5 looks fab, I am sure Jen enjoyed a feast of fried beetles!!! The other crustacians look just a yummy especially the grasshoppers. Your updates are just great keep them coming it's as though we are there with you.
Rgds
Rose & Steve xx
P.S Is Thea with you or is she the token photographer?
Posted by: Rose | July 19, 2006 at 08:52 PM