Our night continued at the famous 老舍茶馆. It was supposed to be a cultural thing and I didn’t had that planned as I thought the children wouldn’t take it well. However, our friend assured us that it would be alright even if the children fussed and make noise since the atmosphere of the place is suppose to be lively.

We were treated to all the major aspect of Chinese culture which includes tea brewing, music, dance, song, martial art, opera, face change and even a magic show. The performances were all interesting and easily appreciated by everyone, even the children were absorb by the various items, else they kept themselves busy with the snacks.

It was definitly an enjoyable night and a great place to visit in Beijing.

Great Wall climbing day today and I have picked 慕田峪 to visit. Took us almost 3 hours to reach the destination by car as traffic was quite heavy.

Zeeyau completed the amazing feat of climbing up the steps to reach the great wall and continued effortlessly for the rest of the trek followed by more climbing up some more steps. 弟弟 climbed and walked and cried for half the journey and demanded to be carried every now and then I would have given up if there was a choice to turn back, carrying 弟弟 while walking up the steps was killing.

弟弟 climbing up the steep steps on the great wall.Getting down the wall was much easier as we bought the cable car tickets. Though it required more effort to reach the great wall by foot, walking down the long flight of steps with children will be too dangerous.

It is May day holiday today in Beijing. I guess it will be crowded everywhere, so the plan was to make a trip out of the city. Well, not a perfect plan as the Beijing city dwellers were having the same plan and some parts of the road was packed with cars driving out of the city.

We left the hotel early at 7.30am, so the traffic weren’t too bad except for a few bottle necks. James did the driving though I was against that idea initially, and it turned out to be a smooth and event less drive after all (thank God).

Anyway, we were heading for 龙庆峡, which took us about 3hours to reach. It was bloody warm and sunny yesterday, so we were all dressed lightly today. However, it was raining in the morning and there was chilly wind blowing. We were confronted with a 14degC temperature and cold wind when we reach our destination and James was without a jacket. Zeeyau was crying and wanted us to return home immediately. We almost headed back home, but decided to have an early lunch and wait for the weather to clear.

We had a meal of 农家饭 (err…country style meal), and their 柴鸡蛋 (range free chicken eggs) were really yummy. However, such simple, non fancy meals cost us around 200rmb. That was really expensive since we could easily have a meal in a nice restaurant for that price . Well, thanks for the meal, the rain stopped, the sun showered its warmth and we managed to make our way into the gorge.

Boat ride in the gorge, kids friendly and leg muscles friendly.

金刚寺, small temple, nothing special.

百花洞, or rather, 假花洞, ultra amusing cave full of fake plastic flowers. The kids found it interesting, we thought it was amusing looking at the plastic flowers, spotting buildings that were falling apart. The toy pandas even had the same expressions and pose.