A Full Day!

And what a full day it was! We eased in gently with a sleep in till our 7.00am  wake up call and a leisurely breakfast, but after that it was non-stop.

A short coach journey deposited us in Tiananmen Square, the scale of which is hard to appreciate without experiencing it. Chairman Mau's mausoleum is just one of many stately buildings co-located with the square, but they were all much more modern than our next target, the Forbidden City. Perhaps a contradiction in terms, since we were actually welcomed in, through the gate formerly reserved for the royal family in fact ... or perhaps they just recognised our class?

The scale of the city (formerly the Imperial Palace) is once more hard to believe until you begin to travel through it. At almost a kilometre long and half a kilometre wide, it boasted a retinue of 40 000 and reputedly contained over 9000 rooms. It was in the City that we spotted a sign to the 'Hall of the Supreme Principle' and briefly wondered whether it would make a good present for Mrs Dunsford (spelling notwithstanding).

After a banquet lunch, it was on to the Llama Temple to see a rather grand location given over to Buddhism. Previously a minor (?!) royal palace, it was hard not to see parallels with the Forbidden City and though it's more recent use may be more spiritual, it was another location rich in symbolism. Sticking with that theme, we then experienced a tea ceremony, though tasted only a few of the many thousand varieties of Chinese tea, including one with no tea in at all!

Our appetites whetted, we then enjoyed a Peking Duck dinner - "similar, but not the same as crispy aromatic duck like at home" was the opinion.

Finally our evening concluded with a Kung Fu show; a dramatic retelling of a classic story ... which fused together storytelling, dance, martial arts and gymnastics. Quite a show to end quite a day.