Our day was another low key day with not a lot planned on the original tour but our guide offered to take us to the Pearl Market in the morning. I wanted to visit the Pearl Market again because I had some people from home who wanted some pearls. Unfortunately the Main Pearl Market was closed due to the Chinese New Year. I was bummed. When our guide had the taxi pull up to the front entrance to the Temple of Heaven, I was a little confused because I knew we had just passed the Pearl Market building that I've visited before. That's when I found out that it was closed and we were just going to another Pearl Store located within the grounds of the Temple of Heaven. The store was all right and I was able to find some good buys for our friends and some stuff for the girls. The guy who helped us in the store was very kind and when he heard it was M.'s Birthday, he gave her an extra pair of earrings to go with the pearl necklace I bought for her. (M doesn't have her ears pierced yet but I'm sure when she does, the earrings would
look beautiful on her). When we first entered the store, we were shown a real oyster and they opened it for us to see how many pearls were inside (we both took a guess before she opened it and boy were we wrong). M mentioned a little later that she wanted an oyster and the salesclerk gave her one that was opened and they were just going to throw it away. Have you ever cleaned out an oyster in a hotel room? Well, we did and we removed about 30 tiny pearls for M to keep. We also cleaned up the oyster shell well enough so that we could bring it home in our suitcase.
The afternoon was a another trip to a local fair. This one was called the Temple Fair. There were just as many people
at this fair as the other one and I had to keep a tight grip on M's hand again. This time we were able to see a few different things but not much. Most of M's view again was about the level of all the people's behinds. I at least had the advantage of height 
so I could see over top of most of the people. M again was able to get some more Cotton Candy. As we were leaving the fair, we were so fortunate to be standing at the right place to see the little dance/drum routine. M was able to be right up front and see everything. I didn't bring my video camera to the fair (mainly because I totally looked ridiculous with a both a digital camera and a video camera hanging around my neck) but I did remember to take some movies with my digital camera so that we could remember the sounds of the fair.
After the fair we headed to our dinner, Imperial Cuisine. Basically it was just another tourist type restaurant that prided themselves on serving food that would have been served to the emperor and such. By this time, I was kind of getting tired of eating Chinese food but managed to fill my belly. M actually ate something at this meal, fried rice. It was the first time that we had fried rice served and M does loves fried rice. At this dinner, we celebrated M's Birthday. The tour company provided a cake and candles for M's birthday. After dinner we all sang Happy Birthday in English and Chinese. M was a very happy little girl that evening. It was wonderful celebrating her Birthday, but it was also a little sad knowing that our trip was almost over. We would be heading back home the next day.
No comments:
Post a Comment