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This is our last day in China. It was another beautiful day in Beijing. We have been very lucky with the weather.
We started the day by checking out of the hotel at 9am. Everything was loaded onto the coach and we set off for the Temple of Heaven. This is a place which measures over 2 million square metres and most of that is park. This was our first stop and here we did a couple of hours of Qigong with Master Gau. I have not met her before but she was great and very thorough. We all knew we had had a workout by the end of the session. This called for ice cream afterwards while we had a break before continuing to the Temple.
This involved a fairly long walk past various buildings in the park. At these points we were free for a short time to wander and take photos. This took about 2.5 hours and finally we made our way out of the park and onto the coach to head towards one of Beijing's hutongs. 8 of the group made their own way to an antiques market.
The traffic was very busy so it took ages to get there. From there we split into two. Half the group were going with Lily to experience a meal and painting a mask (from Peking opera) at a couple of the homes. They were also going to have a rickshaw ride. The rest of us were free to roam the area and do as we pleased. Our little group consisted of 5 of us and we headed for the drum tower, bought tickets for the final performance of the day and headed up the tower. Mo and I had seen this last time but it was great to see it again.
When we came down from the tower Lily was outside waiting to say goodbye to us. She was off to start her next tour and one of her friends was taking over to finish the day off.
We had hoped to make our way to the lake at the Hutong but time was short due to the traffic jams so we found a restaurant and had something to eat. The meal was delicious. We then headed back to meet up with the rest of the group.
We all got on the coach and made our way to the Red Theatre where about half of the group were booked in to see the Kungfu show. The rest of us found ourselves various cafes and drank Chinese tea, coffee or beer. This was our last activity of the holiday. We were then taken to the airport. The Portsmouth group plus 6 of the Liverpool group were booked on a different flight so we said our goodbyes once we were through a very thorough security check.
We are now on the plane to Frankfurt after an amazing trip. Lots of memories to talk about.
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