On Wednesday, we went to the Temple of Heaven in the morning. The temple is in a beautiful park, and again, it was very busy but felt very relaxed. It may have something to do with the wonderful weather!
The Temple of Heaven was where the Emperor would go to ask the gods for a good harvest.
The temple was very beautiful and we enjoyed the morning very much. After the temple we headed to Tiananmen Square, but it's so huge, we decided not to walk around it. Instead, we headed back to the hotel for a rest. We certainly needed one after yesterday!
Matt and I went for a wander instead of having a snooze. Out of our hotel room window we could see interesting rooftops, so decided to investigate. It turned out to be a lovely temple called Dongyue. It's a working temple, but you could pay £1 each to have a look around. It had, all around the edges, 80 rooms with life sizes statues, showing different parts of the jobs of the gods. Some were very strange indeed!
The little temple was very busy with coach loads of tourists arriving all the time. These red offerings were everywhere. We bought one to pray for good harvest in our house and to always have food on the table.
In the evening, on recommendation, we had booked a table at Duck de Chine, a fabulous Peking duck restaurant. It took us a very long time to find the restaurant, and we were convinced the driver had dropped us off at the wrong place. How were we meant to know that we had to walk through an art gallery to get to the restaurant (and yes, it was right where the driver dropped us off!!!). We had pre ordered a whole roast duck, and the chef carved it table side, after a waiter had bonged a gong at the table. The duck was absolutely incredible. So delicious!
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The buildings look really interesting. I see one of the statues in the temple is having his tongue cut off!
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