China -Day 4

Ok, so on to day four. It rained. It was the only day it decided to rain, but it was raining all day, and steadily. We braved it though, went and bought some Chinese umbrellas and set out.

First, we headed to the Temple of Heaven early and spent a few hours there. It was really nice, and huge, but only Cody could take very many pictures, while I held the umbrella, so that wasn't very nice. It was interesting that there were so many people there. There were doing everything from playing card games under cover, to selling trinkets, to dancing and performing some martial arts everywhere we looked throughout the park surrounding all the temples and palaces. It was a lot of fun.

After the Temple of Heaven, we headed out to check out the ancient observatory. It didn't take us long because it was small, but it was really cool to check out all of the old astronomy equipment.

After the Observatory, we headed back to the hostel for awhile to dry off and catch lunch at a local restaurant. I still dream of this place with their huge bowls of soup, fried rice, and best cashew nut chicken I have ever had... so delicious!

After lunch, we hung out at our hostel for awhile to rest. This was good because somewhere along the way I mulled a muscle or tendon in my ankle and it was really starting to hurt. After a little while, Cody and headed out to check out the Olympic Village because it was going to be dark soon and we were told that the Olympic Village would be lit up. Unfortunately, we got there at about 7:30 and the park had closed at 7. We could tell that the buildings were lit up, but it was really hazy and rainy, so we couldn't see much. We left, but we hoped that we could make it back before we left China.

Before heading back to the hostel, we made our way back to Wangfujing market so that we could check out the long line of food stalls they had there. We ended up eating a bunch of dumplings, and noodles, and candy-coated strawberries and pineapple. The fruit was the best, and I thought a genius idea. They basically made a basic hard candy and dipped the fruit in the boiling hot sugar while it was still liquid, and then the candy would harden into a thin delicious shell over the fruit. We didn't buy anything strange or exotic, but they had everything from dog and scorpions on a stick to sea snake and bird's nest soup.

We left the market and went back to the hostel to have some cheap beer with some of the other people staying there, very happy with the food we had just eaten.