Today it was time for some long-sought-for culture, one can only see so many markets as Rhys put it. Alex father was kind to let us borrow their chauffeur Henry so we wouldn’t have to do the tourist groups. We decided to head for a of Great Wall that was close to the Ming tombs. We decided to walk up and stroll around which despite the standard fog/smog gave a quite few spectacular sights.
It was very impressive and you could feel the breeze of history thinking of those poor mongolian barbarians which the wall was aiming to keep out of China. After a hour and a half we decided that we had taken enough photos and decided to go down.
According to lonely planet the slide down was a “total waste of money” (not that great review regarding the cost of 3 €) but I trusted Lotta’s (thanks preggie ;)) scribbled “yeah right” in the margin. Usually these kind of attractions mean low speed and painstaking security measurements, not in this case. When a sign said “slow down” I felt that it really was a good idea, it looked like a long tumbling down if falling over in a curve. All went well though and Laura caught a picture at the finish showing how dignified my descent was.

We decided to eat and had some awesome dumplings and a cup of rip-off tea Henry drove us to the Ming Tombs. It seemed that the old emperors wanted to be buried with style. I wasn’t very impressed to be honest, but I did find the sign at the entrance quite interesting.We decided it was best to follow despite the sensual effect a bunch of wooden coffin replicas had on us. Outside again Ulf and I realized that setting our cameras in “cloudy” mode brought some more colors to our photos. Well, it’s good to know when you get wiser. Rhys wanted to get back to Aria to chat with Bruce Li again but we decided that a cheap meal and some sleep was more what we needed.

Whatever the quality of last nights clubbing it sure felt good to sleep for just another hour, and another. So we skipped breakfast and instead joined the others for lunch at some italian place. Someone was in a spending mood and who was I to object to starting with Champagne and a three coarse breakfast? A decent bill and a really nice latte later we were off to some more markets.

I found a nice lens but the price was a bit steep so I postponed that for later, next stop was Aria, which was supposedly “a nice restaurant”. Taking into consideration the previous places this looked good. The girls mentioned shirts a bit too late so it was sloppy dressing though.

When entering the lobby It looked quite nice, we then found out that Alex had booked us top table we realized that it indeed was a nice restaurant. The food was delicious and the service good as well. This reason for going here was that Rhys, who is a bartender, had read about this place having the best bartender in Bejing as bar manager here, Bruce Li (sic). Rhys mentioned this to the waiter and later Bruce presented himself and gave as complimentary BMWs (Baileys, Malibu and Wiskey, muy nice) and we promised to join him in his bar after our dinner. The waitress who brought the drinks dropped a glass and poured out a few, I felt sorry for her since the glass was probably around a month of her wage.

After having a Strawberry Daiquiri (this guy knew how do to drinks) we went to the bar. It was a nice live jazz-trio and in general a perfect atmosphere. We kept up the class with some Remy Martin XO, the girls then decided to leave but guys stayed for another hour or so. Rhys got another complimentary drink, a blueberry Mojito which beats any Mojito I’ve tasted by far. Luckily for our budget the bar closed quite early, when arriving at our hostel me and Ulf got a meat-on-a-stick each that was sold on our street. When paying we realized how bizarre prices for food and drinks are, we had dinner for about 100 €, drinks for 50 € and final snack on the way home for 1 €.

Uffe and I did some old school blogging while drinking strong stuff from a cheap glass, this time Ulf hade managed to find something that I would rank among the top three worst smelling alcohols. It was absolutely hideous, not that bad taste though, standard cheap oily stuff but the smell gave me goosebumps in the bad way.

Alex, Rhys and Helen were off to a christmas dinner so we were off to our own finding a place to eat for the night. Would it be a shabby place or something more fancy? After some strolling we ended up jumping in cab and calling one of Alex sisters who pronounced the address to Bellagio which we knew nothing about.

It turned out to be an interesting place where all the waiters where women with their hair cut short (very rare here) and humongous deserts. The idea of bringing in starters to start with and then main course to follow had not reached this place though and as we were finishing up they served the rice.

Rhys joined us later for beers and we decided to try some local spirit as well. We should have sensed something was wrong when the waitress couldn’t hide her smile and double-checking that we wanted that. Also the usual interest from neighboring tables (chinese do not find it at all strange or embarrassing to literally glare at you, be that you eating, shopping or just existing) increased at that point. It tasted and smelled rather bad, what’s worse is that it wasn’t strong. We actually gave it up after a while and decided to find a place called Angel which was supposed to be a nice club.

A lovely 10 € entry fee and me not being allowed to bring my camera got to indicate how good the club was. Or not, the music was awful, the drinks tasted water when we finally got them (despite some guy “taking care” of our orders). We were nice and had some shots, some beer and ordered some shots again. This time they mixed the shots with ice and water and gave us in cocktail glasses. The drinks wasn’t cheap either. Well well, at least we gave the club a chance.