Lama Temple, Confucius Temple and Hutong

Today was our last full day in Beijing. Tomorrow we leave for Xian for our first ever sleeper train, excited. We started the day by visiting the Buddhist Lama Temple. The biggest and one of the most important Tibetan temple outside of Tibet. It was good to see a Temple taht was being used actively for worship. The air was thick with the smell of incense. We then went on and did much pondering at Confucius' Temple. It was nice to be able to fit in a visit to both places.

We then went on to visit a Hutong (another long walk away). The Hutong is a narrow street between low houses and courtyards and this one was a busy market street. Loads of people and interesting shops.  We bought some postcards, just need to work out how to post them now. It was good to see another side to Beijing. 

This evening we went to a local restaurant and after struggling a little with the language barrier we got Sweat and Sour Pork balls (which where so sweet it tasted like eating honey drenched pork), a whole Peking Duck with pancakes, two bowels of rice and a couple of drinks for just £13. Some things are very cheap here. We are leaving our first Hostel tomorrow and repacking was very difficult but we got it done. 

We are not sure about how good the internet will be when we leave here so our blog updates may be more sporadic and possibly with less photos. .