Round The World and other travels
A frequent flyer's collection of trip diaries
This is: A Tale of Two Cities (2010)
Confucious, he say ...
It was another morning of blue skies and sunshine, full of promise for the day ahead. My plan was to follow a similar pattern to the previous day: a couple of nearby temples in the morning, lunch back in the Wangfujing area and then a visit to the Summer Palace in the afternoon before hopefully meeting up with frequent-flyer friend Martin in the evening. Having missed out on meeting him in Shanghai the previous year, I was looking forward to catching up at last. After breakfast, I once again set out for Dengshikou metro station. My first objective was the Lama Temple, or more correctly the Yonghe Temple, a well-known Tibetan Buddhist monastery.
A five-minute walk then took me to the Confucian Temple, a place where for centuries people have paid homage to the great classical Chinese philosopher and teacher.
Adhering to the successful routine of the previous day, I had lunch in the Oriental Plaza mall before setting out for the long, somewhat tortuous and extremely crowded metro journey to the Summer Palace, located well out in the north-west of the city. Now a UNESCO World Heritage site, the palace provided an imperial retreat during the warm summer weather. It is a vast site, though much of it is occupied by a lake. As I was to find out, it is also very hilly in parts!
It was after 5pm when I finally got back to the Hilton and I was a little concerned that it was going to be a bit of a rush to meet up with Martin. The first thing I did on arrival was to go up to the lounge to check my e-mails using the wi-fi service there, only to find that I had an apologetic message from my elusive friend saying that he was stuck in Shanghai, thanks to an error by his travel agent. So once again, our meeting was destined not to happen. Looking on the bright side, at least I was not in a rush any more. After I had freshened up, I made the almost obligatory visit to Happy Hour and then decided to repeat Thursday's experience at the in-house Chynna restaurant. It was every bit as good second time around. I went to bed happy that it had been another successful day, yet also mindful of the fact that my second visit to China's capital was all but over.