And you thought that was it?! No, no, I'm afraid you're going to have to endure an entry like that for every single day of my trip. I'll edit them later to add some photos and then post the link to them all once I know where my dad's stored them for me.
Thursday 23rd September - I didn't sleep very well at all that night despite having been awake for more than 30 hours. I was totally confused as to what time it was and kept waking up thinking it was nearly time for the alarm to go off. The ironing board didn't help matters and at 3am I decided I could no longer stand it and so found an extra douvet to lie on. It padded things out a little but it wasn't exactly what one might call comfortable. I eventually fell asleep and was dead to the world by about 6:50 but of course, the alarm was due to go off at 7!
Breakfast was - how shall I say this - interesting. It saw Miss Robinson trying to ask for a knife, James using chopsticks to spread jam onto his croissant and Ben eating noodles with chopsticks in a very odd fashion. He was not happy to be coached by Hanna on how to eat and would probably have poked her eyes out with the chopsticks had I not been sat inbetween them. As for me, I had a croissant and jam (spread with the communal knife rather than with chopsticks) and a slice of cake with icing so bright that Kathryn thought it would turn my poo pink. I told her I'd let her know.
We left the hotel at 8:30 and battled the rush hour traffic to get to the Forbidden City. Once we were there I had an "oh my, I'm actually in China" moment when I was stood looking at one of the buildings with a breeze across my face and the sound of excited chatter and Chinese music in my ears. I tried to capture the moment with my camera but I'm not sure I succeeded. We carried on pushing our way through the city, trying to translate Ewan into an English we could understand. No mean feat when you consider he spoke Chinglish and we speak Widnesian!
There was nearly an outrage when the dawdlers amongst us came toddling over to us with ice creams melting over their sticky little fingers. The worst tantrum came, unsurprisingly, from Ben who had to be promised one at a later date before he would move from the spot he had rooted himself to.
Helena took us to a shop which was priced to match the number of tourists it would encounter. This didn't stop Kathryn buying a purple parasol which became her new prized posession. I still remain adament that it is not an umbrella with holes in because why would anyone want an umbrella that had holes in?
After leaving the shop, we made our way back to the roadside to get on our coach. There were so many street sellers shouting "one doller" at us that we all just formed a huge line and tried to run through the crowds. That worked quite well but to our disappointment, our coach wasn't actually there yet so we had to stand round and wait whilst we were bombarded by people wanting to sell us watches and models and all manner of things for one doller. The coach arrived not a moment too soon and we all beat off the crowds of people and jumped aboard.
The coach took us at breakneck speed to lunch, beeping his horn as he went. I really enjoyed this meal, particularly the lovely bread things you dipped into honey (which tasted more like custard to me and everyone else at my table) and the sweet potatoes covered in caramelised sugar. The only problem with these things was that we didn't know you weren't supposed to just take them off the plate and get sugar everywhere until the waitress came over with a bowl of warm water, took James' chopsticks off him and demonstrated the art of dipping the potato in the water so that the sugar froze. James sheepishly wiped the sugar from his nose, thanked her and tucked in.
Once we'd been pryed from the delicious banquet, we rolled back into the coach and headed for Tiannenman Square. When I got there, my eyes would just not stop streaming so I decided I must be allergic to the place but about 5 minutes later I was fine again. I took lots of photos and was photographed rather a lot myself, not least by a photographer from a newspaper who wanted one of our whole group to go in the paper the following week.
It took about an hour to walk round the whole square which isn't surprising considering it is the largest square in the world, even bigger than the Red Square in Moscow. It took us even longer to buy ice creams but we decided it had better be done since that boyfried of mine would only have thrown another tantrum.
We finished taking photos of Tiannenman Square and then went to a lovely little park. We didn't see much of it though because our guides made the mistake of telling us we could go to the toilet if we wanted to. Public toilets in China tend to be mainly holes in the floor, that sounds unhygienic but most of them are ok really but by this stage of our holiday not many of us were willing to try them. For this reason Helena took us all round this park in search of western toilets. Bless her! We thanked her profusely and learnt the Chinese for thank you.
We spent another half an hour in the park after that but Kathryn spotted some pedelos and wanted a go so we thought it best to escort her out of there. That and it was time for our fourth Chinese banquet. The food was really good so I was quite looking forward to seeing what we'd be served with. Plus it was always good fun using chopsticks, spinning the table round and trying new things. My favourites on this particular evening were the bread things again, a dried pineapple or pasta type thing that we couldn't figure out what it was and an egg dish made especially for me. The only issue with this was using chopsticks to eat it - I defy anyone to be able to eat something with the texture of egg custard with chopsticks. Helena sorted me out again though and I had it with some rice which I thoroughly enjoyed.
We were rushed out of the restaurant after a quick wee (the oriental way) and almost losing Lucy, and we went on our way to an acrobatics show. We were tootling along, beeping our horn in our little coach when we stopped all of a sudden. It turned out we'd bumped into a car (it was only a matter of time, let's face it) and so we had to walk to the theatre, thus missing the first 15 minutes of the show. I didn't mind though since Helena had told Mrs Whittingham that I was very brisk and beautiful!
The show was amazing and my photos don't do it justice at all but I can only try. My favourites were probably the gymnasts and the guys on the poles at the end but they were all incredible. You'd expect it really given the amount of training they apparently do.
On the way back, they took us past Tiannenman Square to see it all lit up. It was stunning but I have no photos of that since the flash would only have reflected the windows on the coach. John also tried to teach us some Chinese which wasn't exactly successful. I did manage to learn hello, thank you and I love you by the time we were going home though. He threatened or promised to teach us some more the next day on our way to The Great Wall.
Julia, Ben and Rachel came into our room for a bit that evening and we had a bit of a giggle about the day's events. The five of us were the permenant fixtures but throughout the evening we had 10 visitors, 6 phonecalls and 5 knocks at the door. Little did Hanna know that it was just people coming to rescue me from her watching Chinese tv!
I hope they come tomorrow.
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