Due to the unsatisfactory conditions and location of the originally booked hotel in Beijing when we first arrived, we opted to switch to Scitech Hotel - one which we had a fair impression of since it was the first hotel we stayed in during our very first trip to China a few years ago. However, since it has been a fair number of years ago, the hotel seemed to be in a fairly dilapidated state.
The breakfast was the most decent for the entire trip though - full range of buffet breakfast with almost no weird menu items (like hot orange juice). But they also still had Chinese yogurt~
After breakfast was a trip to 天坛, where the emperor apparently did most of the main religious rites during his time. There are 4 such places, namely 天坛, 地坛, 日坛, and 月坛 distributed across the city, but the most popular one for tourists is the 天坛. 坛 means "altar", so each altar represents the heaven, earth, sun, and moon respectively, and the emperor was to travel to each and every altar after performing the respective rites at the respective altars.
The outskirts of the altar has been made into some kind of park, where the elderly and/or families come to spend quality time. The image above depicts a popular past time for some of the elderly folk - using a makeshift brush and water, they practice calligraphy on the stone tiles.
And for dinner, a quaint little Mongolian restaurant in the city of Beijing:
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| Stewed Chinese yams |
After a filling dinner and a nice amount of Chivas later, we went back to the hotel and made our way back to KL, with a stopover at Hong Kong International Airport. I forgot to download a VPN for this trip, so I was without social media until we got to Hong Kong.
All in all, it was a fair trip. I guess it was much less nerve wracking since we had a pre-planned itinerary and a tour guide to get us to most places~
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