Hello!

Today we got up at the crack of dawn to meet our guide cherry for the historical Beijing tour. Expected to be part of a big group but it was just our driver, me, Gail and our guide cherry so we were chuffed to get a private tour to ourselves.

First visit was the panda garden at Beijing zoo. It was fab to see real live ones rather than on tv. Some of the baby ones are hand reared now as the adults can only look after one at a time and they were becoming endangered. We watched them playing outside and eating bamboo. We are still getting stared at by the Chinese which is a bit weird - Gail had a camera shoved in her face!

We then went to the summer palace which was used a a summer residence for the emperors back in the day. Now open to the public and is beautiful. Lots of pagoda buildings, walkways and bridges built around a huge lake, really pretty. Lots of dragon boats on the lake for the tourists but we didnt get a chance to go on one as we were short for time - you'd need a fullday there to see it properly.

Next was a visit to the pearl market where we were shown how the pearls are cultivated. I was asked to pick out an oyster and they opened it to see how many were inside. I scooped out a large one but it was only 5 years old so only had around 10-15 pearls inside (usually there are more). We got to keep one as a souvenier. They took us to a showroom to give us the hard sell on the jewellery but me and Gail were no for buying!

We had lunch next door to the pearl market in a chinese restaurant - a spicy soup with with tofu and coriander which was really nice, chicken and shredded veg in a spicy sauce, two other veg dishes, rice, melon and chinese tea. Stuffed our faces while being stared at by the staff.

Next we went to 'Dr Tea' to learn about Chinese tea. Tried 4 different ones - green tea, jasmine, oolong and litche. Oolong was our favourite and good for constipation apparently but we're no that fussed about that as the loos here are an experience! We were shown how to hold the cups properly and slurp certain ones for flavour. They had this temperature guage thing called 'Mr Pee Pee' which was a ceramic doll and if you poured hot water on him he peed - she gave a demonstration and he peed all over the table. He doesnt do anything with cold water but I think we all know you need to boil the kettle to make a brew! Again we got the hard sell for the tea but we didnt buy any and I didn't want a 'Mr Pee Pee'.

Met up with Sherry again for our last tour stop at the Llama temple. This was a Bhuddist temple built for royalty but is now a monastery and recently opened to the public. Lots of Chinese people burning incense and praying to the large buddha structures. Only allowed to take photos of the buildings outside as they are places of worship but we have a dvd to take home. The buildings were amazing, lots of detail and dragon statues outside. One of them held a 18m sandalwood buddha which was carved from a single tree and given as a gift to the emperors. It was massive and holds a guinness world record.

We were dropped off at the hotel to rest our feet and have a snooze before meeting our tour group for dinner.