13. Summer Palace on our 11th Wedding Anniversary

Max has decided on a change of our itinerary today, because this is the last day of the national holiday we’re going to visit the Summer Palace instead of the Temple of Heaven, as he thinks that although this will still be pretty busy, it won’t be anywhere near as bad as far as the crowds are concerned.

Yes, it was busy, but certainly not as bad as it was at the Terracotta Warriors! After Max had given us some history

regarding this place we were let off the leash, but only for one and a quarter hours, and the area is huge so it will be difficult to see any great amount of what is available here. Still we walked around part of the waters edge towards the Marble Boat, but it was too far to walk with these crowds slowing down our progress, so we decided to slowly make our way back, via the shop for an ice cream, along the 780 metre long corridor, making it the longest corridor in the world, and appropriately known as........................... The Long Corridor.

Following this was the opportunity of an optional visit to see an old house and its owner in the old quarter of town, an area which they have saved from demolition as it’s now an historic interest sight. And more than that, we get to have a rickshaw ride around the site to the house. It was quite an insight into

how things used to be just a few decades ago, in fact it was somewhere very similar to this that Max was brought up in. Mrs Wong was very accommodating and answered all of our questions with the help of Max as translator. The usual set up in these areas was to have three or four homes around a small courtyard off the main street. Some had running water but never a toilet or plumbed bath, these were in a toilet block on the street that would be the only services for anything up to a hundred households. These families within the courtyards all helped and supported each other and, as it was only one child per family back in those days, the children all played together which was almost like having brothers and sisters for them.

We returned to the hotel around half past three, and needed to be down in the lobby by a quarter to six to go to the

restaurant for dinner! It was a nice looking place tonight, from the outside it looked like an ancient painted temple, and we even had a room all to ourselves with our usual four tables.

We were back at the hotel before seven thirty, which I’m absolutely sure was nothing to do with the fact that Max would be going home to his family as soon as we were dropped off, and who can blame him for that! To a man everyone headed into the hotel... with the exception of Elaine and I, we set off to hunt down the Starbucks that Max told us about, that was apparently just across the river that we somehow managed to miss yesterday evening!

Well we had far more success this time, the river was actually only about twenty metres beyond where we turned right for

the third time last night as instructed, we only failed by turning a few seconds too soon, or maybe Max should have said... right, right, and then second right!

Although we weren’t hungry, we were craving something sweet, as we seldom get any dessert at these Chinese restaurants, so it’s a Flat White Coffee with a naughty chocolate cake for Elaine, and a vanilla syrup sweetened Latte with a cheeky cheesecake for me. Whilst enjoying our indulgences I noticed the barista’s name was, of all things, Ian... the last name we’d ever expected a Chinaman to have.

We stopped by the river on the way back to the hotel so we could listen to the booming croaks of the frogs, there were certainly a lot of them, and they were loud... very loud.