Beijing

Saturday, August 22, 2015

Today is our last day in Beijing, we are returning tomorrow.  We started the day with a visit to the Lama temple, the second most important Tibetan Buddhist temple (after the one in Lhasa).  The temple was full of pilgrims and people praying, with four large halls and courtyards.  In the last one, we saw an 18 m tall statue of the Tibetan Buda – very impressive.  

We also visited the Temple of Heaven, and also managed to visit Beihai – that is the place where Kublai Kahn had his palace.  We finished our last day in Beijing with the last dinner at the Peking duck restaurant which we enjoyed very much. That is where we run out of luck - the place is quite close to the Tiananmen Square where a celebration will be held in a week. There are huge preparations for the 70-th anniversary of the WWII, even all air polluters were stopped. That is the reason we had nice sunny days with a blue sky instead of hazy smog, as we had the first few days. 

When we came to the subway station, it was closed, police and security everywhere. We were sent off to the next subway station which was also closed. No taxi would take us (or other people). We got lucky only at the 3rd S-station which was open.  We managed to catch the very last train to our hotel that night…