Summer Palace and finally a nice Chinese person!

Amazingly we got up in time for one hell of a long bus ride out to the Summer Palace in Beijing. Getting there we were approached as-ever by a whole host of touts and tour-guides, though this time we actually chose Lily who was a a gem, rather than getting ripped-off. Wow - this can occasionally happen. Whilst on this tour I was found to be particularly adept at telling which artifacts (including a table) were built for the purpose of holding water and which weren't. Quite a claim I feel!

The palace was rammed with a whole host of highly-collectible antiques (including the first telephone in China, built at Bell Laboratories), sculptures of animals and a whole host of beautiful paintings and woodwork all along the longest painted corridor in China (I'll remember what its called later). We also checked-out the Marble Boat and the 17-arch bridge. After a bit of farting about with Kung Fu poses and then checking out the government-ran shops (where you actually know you're buying non-imitation) we checked-out the lake area which was also gorgeous, and then on with out mission - to buy Martin a new guitar at one of the shops we'd seen earlier that day.

It was Lyly's last tour of the day so we invited her out for a meal back at the awesome Beijing-duck restaurant nearly next-door to the Leo hostel where we were now staying. It turned out she had played guitar years ago so we all got the chance to have a wee strum in the shops whilst we waited for Martin to decide. Finally we got to dinner, and once again it was awesome...even the strange corn-crispies cooked in fat and coated in hundreds and thousands which Lyly said we should try. What was also particularly good was the mash-potato with creamy cheese sauce...a great reminder of home. She said she had a huge appetite...which she wasn't lying about, but by the end of our enormous meal none of us felt like moving! Job-well-done and all for about GBP7 including wine!