Ancient Heaven and Modern Birds Nest

Our last day in Beijing was spent visiting the gorgeous & ancient Temple of Heaven, the oldest building in Beijing Temple_of_Heaven

The temple is surrounded by a huge park where all the retired people gather to do exercises, dance, do Tai Chi, sing Chinese opera or in a choir, play music, cards, knit and/or chat. It is very relaxed you can join in on anything - as we did to a game which was basically badminton played with your feet! Needless to say the lads who had spent more time playing football were much better than the rest of us! Great fun!

If you look hard in the photo above you can just see the feathered ball with Simon about to come in for the kick! kick shuttle football

Malcolm and half the group went in the evening by Beijing underground to see the famous Olympic Bird Nest stadium. Even to get into the station there were x-ray scanners!

 

Very impressive but also very smoggy with air pollution!

WOW - The Great Wall of China

Before we left Beijing we travelled to see and walk on part of the Great Wall of China - reputed to be the only man made object visible from space. The structure was so impressive I was very disappointed to find out that the legend is no true - it would apparently have to be at least 70 feet wide to be visible from space!

Space viewing or not the wall is superb, you can feel the history seeping out of all the cracks, steps and joints. At one point Malcolm went on to walk up a very steep part with endless steps so I sat on the wall and watched the world go by. I had to pinch myself to realise that I was actually on the real GREAT WALL of CHINA - WOW!!

 This is the small section we were taken to which is open for tourists, in the photo below you can see how far up on the hills it is.

 Here you can see the wall snakeing away into the distance, behind Kris our guide who we never lost due to her unique hat!

 The wild cherry blossom was an added delight.
 

There are lots of guard towers along the wall, which follows the tops of the hills and mountains - see photo two below the towers are visible way into the distance. The walls, steps and towers are all different sizes, so it is quite challenging to walk whilst looking at the view! 

 

The view from my seat on one of the iconic places in the world. What a privilege - Soooooo lucky! 

Highights of China - Beijing.

After a mad time sorting tickets, handing over at work, sorting the flat, packing and repacking, trying to sell the Jazz,  having final flat whites/ glasses of sav blanc etc with friends and generally going in ever faster, in ever decreasing circles we eventually flew off to Beijing via Singapore.

We joined a friendly group of 7 folk on the Exodus tour with our excellent friendly guide Kris.

First stop - Tianenman Sq and the Forbidden City.

 The square is VAST and as you'd expect full of militaristic symbols

Strangely there was nothing to mark the famous student versus the tank stand off!

Then on to the Forbidden City, which was again vast and very colourful having been repainted before the 2008 Olympics. This huge palace was the major administrative centre for the whole empire, so there were many huge open spaces and meeting halls, and as we found everywhere it was FULL of people!

The characters on the edges of the roofs below indicate that this was a royal palace and this has the maximum number of animals so this was the Emperor's building.

All very majestic but not very personal - it must have been a rather uncomfortable place to live!

We did see some places on a more human scale including having a meal in one of the local Hutongs (sort of old side streets),street food for breakfast and a visit to a very enthusiastic but rather odd chap who breeds Fighting Crickets - not to mention a rather strange Kung fu show!

 

 

The electrics in the Hongs and many other areas looked more like spaghetti!

 

 

 

Mr Cricket Man!

 Fried bread for breakfast - our guide Kris was a real 'foodie' and knew all the great local places and best food to have. She was excellent.

 

 

 There were some interesting translations we came across - this is a 'Reverse Vending Machine'........ ie a recycling bin!

 And the one below shows real pride in proper use of the facilities!

 Malcolm even ended up on stage in the Kung Fu show - don't really know what was going on but he did look a bit worried at times!

 

And so we say Farewell!

Hello again after a wee break, well we have now said Farewell to Awesome NZ and we arrived back in beautiful Britain on 5th May after taking our time to have a pretty epic trip back across the world. We don't return to our home in Knutsford till mid June, so we had plenty of time to enjoy trips to China, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand before arriving back on 5th May.

Farewell to Auckland airport!

Also sorry about the confusion in my last blog, it is NZ we will be returning to for a just few months in January 2017. There is still so many places to see and things to do out there not to mention all the precious 'stuff' Shona has collected and was not able to cram into the suitcases this time round!

We did go round and say a final farewell over Easter to friends we had first met at Easter 2014 including John and Ruth

 Noel the Green Man from Envirohub seen here at the Tauranga Jazz Festival

 Mary the awesome chair of the Antiques and Collectibles group and my main buddie for swimming at the hot pools!

 The staff at my all time favourite Coffee shop - Pronto - see the Tui picture in the background? And the view of the Mount Maunganui Beach - just another perfect day in paradise!

 And Shona's favourite sailing buddies from the Ted Ashby - what fun we all had.

 

SOOOOOOO sad to say farewell but like bad pennies we have promised we'll turn up again in NZ