My original goal was to get all my China photos posted by the end of 2011. I’m off by 2 days which isn’t too bad! Of course, I still have all my Taiwan photos to crawl through too. /groan
Anyways, here is day 6 in Beijing in which we met up with fatwetdog and her husband, Nick, who speaks better Chinese than both me and Marcus. =D They took us fabric shopping and then we checked out Beihai and Houhai.
We started off the day by going shopping in the fabric district of Beijing. It’s a bit tricky to get to because you need to take a cab and some cabbies (like ours) had no idea where to drop us off, but if you are ever in Beijing, try to go!
They have lots of prints we don’t have but the main reason to go would be to get silks and brocades.
The silks and brocades were in a different alley from the one we started on.
We went a little nuts. It’s hard to resist when the brocades that run $12-25/yd can be had for $3-5 a meter. ^^;;;
Judy made this guy get up there like 4 times. LOL. But she bought a lot in his store so I’m sure he was happy!
Marcus holding up some of our purchases. To give you an idea of how much we got: all the fabric went into it’s own duffel bag with half of Judy’s mahjong set. It weighed in at 40 lbs at the airport! (Ok granted a mahjong set is heavy, but still!)
Then we decided to go Beihai park which is this huuuuge park in middle of Beijing.
It was a bit cloudy that day but it didn’t rain which was great.
It’s a beautiful park. It’s a little hard to believe it’s smack in middle of such a big city.
We decided it would take too long to walk all the way around the lake so we took the ferry boat to one of the farther sections. Yeah, that’s how big the park was.
There’s a famous temple on the island in the middle of the lake.
And lots of beautiful gardens.
There were a lot of local kitties! We spent a good ten minutes just walking them stroll around on these rocks.
I think I remember taking this exact same photo in Tokyo…
This kitty is very very happy about this rock. LOL
After Beihai, we went to Houhai, which is a pretty area with a lot of bars and cafes on the water.
There were quite a few restaurants with a ton of brightly colored couches outside. I’m guessing they just leave them out in the rain cause where would you stack all those couches…?
o_O
We were getting really tired from all the walking so we finally stopped for some sustenance. Before food….
After food…
And dinner!
With cute little birdie desserts with red bean paste inside.
Then it was off to the hotel to pack up as we were all leaving the next day.
The next morning, Judy and I went out to get some breakfast pastries. It only rained on our last day in Beijing. We got really lucky with all the beautiful weather.
We hadn’t taken a pedicab the whole trip so we decided to take one back to the hotel. I don’t know why we keep doing this to ourselves. It’s always terrifying… doesn’t matter if it’s San Diego or Beijing. -_- Yes, this is him driving us down the wrong side of the road.
A couple final shots of our hotel…
This was in the Beijing Airport. Pretty huh?
Marcus and I took a flight out to Taiwan, and Judy and Aimee caught their flights back to the U.S. And that was China! It was beautiful and there are so many amazing things to see with so much history. I would love to go back again to see more places like Xian and Suzhou.
