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We slept well and woke up expecting lots of stiff limbs – but it wasn’t the
case. Steven's hip and elbow was still sore after his fall, but generally we
were fine - the past 3 weeks long walks had been good preparation. Even so we decided to take a quiet day – shopping!
We hadn't got very far down Wangfujing before we'd bought shoes for Yanmei, Daji and Lene and clothes for
Daji and Yanmei. We very rarely see tourists shopping in the department stores
on Wangfujing - Beijings main shopping
street - but the silk and pearl markets are always packed with tourists!. It's a
pity, because there are real bargains to be had - and on original clothes, not
copies. As soon as there are only a few pieces of a particular model left, the Chinese slash the
price with 50 or 70%. Each stall in the children’s department has a box with
reduced priced clothing, and this is where you can find real bargains – we
bought Snoopy and Disney amongst others at 50 RMB a piece.
We shopped for a few hours at a leisurely pace, took coffee at Starbucks and
made our way back to the hotel. We also had to buy a new sports bag - we hadn't
bought that much, but we always take an empty sports bag that fits into a
suitcase. We'd used the bag on the trip to Pingyao and Guilin, but unfortunately
the handle had fallen off on the flight from Guilin.
In the evening we took a chance to again visit Mrs Liu’s family restaurant, and again had an excellent meal in the yard. We got the last available table (again), so we were extremely lucky to twice get a table – when I’ve read elsewhere that the restaurant can be fully booked months in advance.
Unusually we didn't take any pictures, today - shopping isn't motivational for
picture taking. So the pictures of Chinese sleeping are taken throughout the holiday. The
Chinese can sleep anywhere - but often the benches they sleep on are only as
hard as the beds they sleep in. Chinese beds are hard!
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