We needed a break after we found our thighs, calves etc burning after some serious trekking. So we had a planning day and made arrangements for our Great Wall trip the next day and Jill booked some train rides for India which is to follow. That said we did go for a cruise around Beijing to Ghost Street, a strip of restaurants that seems never to end, with the lanterns and touts everywhere. One restaurant was seemingly indistinguishable from the next so we randomly stopped at one and had a meal which was excellent. Jill has found a new favourite dish but we still do not know what it is called but she has pointed to the picture 3 times now. The dish is similar to duck pancakes but has pork instead and the pancakes are very different too. One of the restaurants had it listed as Beijing Heaving but they had so many translation mistakes it could have been anything.

BEIJING

The flight to Beijing was delayed by 2 hrs which meant our driver had left but we made a call, waited an hour and were scooped and found ourselves in yet another excellent hostel (with a slab of concrete for a bed). We headed to the hostel bar for a local ale (Beijing Beer) which was so nice that we had many. We met a German tourist who was leaving the next day and we all decided that after about 10 pints that it was time to walk 40 minutes to the night markets. We still dont know if we found the night markets but we found a night time strip of street vendors that had every kind of animal on a stick being BBQed.

Jill started us off with BBQ squid on a stick, which was quickly followed by a plate of pot stickers and a bowl of pork balls in Chilli…and then Richard and our new German mate got started. Things that followed included: Crabs, bugs, snake, and scorpions. Needless to say Richard and Stefan did the freaky eats and Jill just shook her head. After a few of these we decided that the pot stickers and a meat on a stick thing was actually pretty tasty.  All of this came for about $2.50 a plate (or stick). Back to the hostel for more Beijing beer.

The morning saw a slow start and a trip to the Temple of Heaven. This was to be a cruisey kind of day that ended up starting our walk at 10:45 and finishing 7 hours later a little tired and emotional. This first challenge was to work out the Beijing Metro which proved remarkably easier than we expected. The temple was awesome but a little sideline saw us lost within a massive park that needed about 7kms walking to get us back to where we wanted to be.