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Hey its Lily i havnt written a blog for a while after nearly fainting in a very hot internet cafe somewhere in sri lanka so its my turn to fill you in with the mad goings on of china.
we arrived in Beijing after i very weird flight 2 landings and 2 takeovers after a planned stop over in Bangkok. everything so very strange and very different already to sri lanka. before we did anything we had to visit our favourite place starbucks. after grabbing a coffee and some lunch we headed out into the unknown where NOONE spoke english!! our first challange was to try and get a cab to the hotel this is generally a simple task but provde very diffcult and very stressfull. our cab driver spoke no english and did not no where our hotel was!! this resulted in laura speaking to his daughter on the phone who had a level of understanding.
We finally ended up at the hotel, but our best challange of checking was just around the corner. Again the recepation staff hardly spoke english and checking in was not a simple process. Once checked in we finally got to our room and put on our warm clothes as it was frezzing and headed for an explore of the area. we ended up walking around getting lost and eating in a random rest where i dont think that had ever seen tourists the food was gorgeous tho even though we didnt have a clue what we were ordering. We went to bed very early after no sleeping in a bed for more than 38 hours!!
we woke up the nest day quite late and headed into the center we met some chinnese girls that wanted to practice there english and show us around they were very sweet and didnt want money so we took them up on there offer and they should us around and took us to a tea place where we tried a variety of teas and had some lunch. after lunch we headed to where the cctv building is and walked around and did some shopping!!! we went to a place called the silk market where you have to baragin very hard but its worth it!!! ( were not to sure how we both ended up buying starbucks t-shirts but its impossible to get out of it). by the time we had finished shopping we headed back to our hotel and munched in a restaurant by hotel we had peking duck which was gorgeous!!!
day 2 of beijing we decided to visit the Zoo i was unsure about going to the zoo as it said in the guide book the animails are kept in small cages and its not a nice expereice. we decided to make our own minds up and actually go! we were very exited also to see the pandas! overal the guide book was right it wasnt really the best conditions for the animails esp after seeing elephants in sri lanka walking around! however the pandas where kept in good condition. we also visited the aquarium and this generally was a much more enjoyable experience. After the long day at the zoo we just muched and went to bed...
wednesday was the start of the tour.. before this we were on a mission to find zara!!! we knew that it existed however finding it was an insane task that took well over an hour and asking laods of people to point us in the right direction!! we finally ended up at zara!! of course we bought stuff how dosnt in zara. the changing room queue was somthing else max items 10.. so the queue is mad. laura queued for about 30 minutes!! very stressfull. After our manic zara expediation it was time to meet the tour group. we had a breif meeting and then all headed out for a mssive dinner!! everyone is around our age and everyone is going on to other places every different to the sri lankan tour..
Yesturday we visited the forbidden city which is massive to see everything you would need 2 days!! we walked around with our tour guide for about an hour and a half generally just got a feel for it by the time we headed towards the exit everyone was straving and we went to a small dumplings resturant and ate loads!!!! we ordered about 10 dishes and each dish came with 15 dumplings and there soo filling. The evening was spent watching a kung fu show which was awesome i loved every minute esp cos me and lau did karate and there were so many refereneces and moves from karate the whole expereicne was amazing... we had a rather late fast foodish dinner as the show finished late and everyone eats really early here...
Today our last day in beijing wo got up really rather early as we wanted to make the most of it. headed out to our new fav coffee establishment called spr coffee and had some breakfast lets just say ordered wrong (nothing new) anyway we then made our way to the temple of heaven. we enjoyed a lovely morning of strolling around the park and visiting the temple. by the time we found the exit and the metro it was already 12 so we were on our next mission for food we headed towards the plympic vilage anf had some lumch. after a really nice but filling lunch we headed off on walk to find the olympic village the whole area is being re developed and it was really intersting to see all the new buildings we took loads of photos and just enjoyed walking around. very tired now to much fresh air i think!!!
Lots of love Lily and Laura
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