Beijing is huge - everything is big - and new. And old. 1st stop was the Temple of Heaven via the bus. A huge garden with various Temples in where the Emperor would go to sacrifice a calf for a good harvest. There were a few areas where the acoustics were interesting - whispering on the circular wall. We acquired another chinese friend who - unlike everyone else thought he had to make friends with us in order to take a photo. He followed us for 30 minutes before he took his picture and left.

Afterwards we took a taxi in the rough direction of the acrobats theatre thinking we would get some tickets for the evening performance. However just as we arrived at 5.10 there was a performance about to start - so we picked the price of the tickets and were sat down straight away (it didn't seem to matter we had the cheapest price - we were sat fairly near the front). The various performances were something out of the generation game, plate spinning, bowl catching (whilst on unicycles), jumping through hoops (with flick flacks, somersaults etc), drum spinning, climbing poles, and body contortion. All pretty amazing.

Headed back to the hostel as it was late and not really knowing where we would eat as we were being compromised now by the children's dislike of noodles and rice, and I was fed up of McDonalds now. Edward was asleep by the time we got back and after a short discussion - the chaps running the hostel recommended going for a chinese Hot Pot. The guy very kindly came down to the restaurant with us to help us order. It was something like a fondu, a bowl of soup/broth on a gas ring and raw meat and veg to dip in it to cook. Very nice and even the kids liked it. The meat was then dipped in a seaseme seed type paste. Yum.

Long day - but great.