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| View from our cab on the way to Confucious Teahouse. |
Katie and I forced ourselves out of bed after a late night at the tennis center followed by dinner at a 24-hour hot pot place in Sanlitun. We were determined to get some sight seeing in, and I really wanted to go to this tea house I had heard about near Confucious Temple. We hopped in a cab and made our way to an amazing little tea house across the street from the temple.
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| We loved the atmosphere at Confucious Teahouse. |
I’m so happy we made it—the atmosphere was so relaxing and it was the perfect way to start off the day. Our “waitress” performed the traditional tea ceremony over our tea, and taught us how to use the cups and hold it the correct way. (They don’t like that Katie is left-handed--several people tried to correct her!)
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We ordered a wild green tea and a white-flower tea.
The tea ceremony was like every little girl’s dream. After we finished our tea, we looked around at the little shop and bought some tea to take home. They showed us how to use all of the tea paraphernalia and made some black tea for us to sample while we made our purchases. |
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| Never would I ride a bike in Beijing! |
We took a cab to the tennis center for a quick meeting at 12:30, but then I had some free time before the women’s match so I decided to go to the Silk Market with Sarah and Travis. Our cab driver dropped us off a few blocks over from the market, and I was starving because we had only had tea all day. I bought a grilled sweet potato off a street vendor for 5 RMB—and it was delicious!
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| Just walking around Beijing eating a sweet potato! |
We bought a ton of things at the silk market—including gorgeous silk scarves. We were just glad to get inside from the smog, it was really bad outside. We stayed at the market for a few hours, browsing everything from Buddha statues to fake designer clothes, then hopped in a cab to try to make it back to the tennis center.
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| Stuck on a overpass in smoggy traffic! The taxi drivers all got out to have a smoke. |
We ended up getting stuck in a horrible traffic jam on the way back! It took us almost 2 hours to get back to the hotel. After about 45 minutes we became pretty good friends with our cab driver-we showed him everything we bought from the silk market!
At one point, we were stuck on a ramp for over 30 minutes in the smog—after that we were all feeling like we couldn’t wait to get a breath of fresh air! Later we found out it was one of the worst pollution levels ever recorded in Beijing. The tennis games ended up being delayed because of rain and smog! We ended up staying late at the tennis center saying our goodbyes to the staff and all of our friends we had made--it was hard to say goodbye! |
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