Just had a brilliant weekend!

Well, my 1st real weekend in Beijing went really well!!!
On Friday night, I didn't do much as I was pretty knackered from my days in Sanya and from the trip back to the city but it was good to rest...

On Saturday night though, we all went out to celebrate Joe's birthday and took a taxi to the "Beijing Kiev" Restaurant... How typical! Basically, it defines itself as the only restaurant in Beijing serving real traditional Ukrainian food :) We ordered a bunch of stuff to eat and tried out some "Kvac" which is supposedly a typical beverage... Inna, can you confirm? I apologize in advance but I have to say, this thing was ab-so-lu-te-ly disgusting... it tastes like some kind of sweet and sour beer mixed with some kind of medicine... Yuck! At this place, the good thing is all about entertainment as they have a big group of Ukrainian opera singers walking around the room giving a great performance. Okay, it's a bit noisy at times but it's good for one night... Want to have a look?



If you dare to, you can also order a specific tune from the song list but of course, this requires some skills :)




After dinner, we took another taxi to go to "Face Bar" for some drinks... Oh yeah, let me explain - in case you haven't understood yet, you can't do much by foot so you totally rely on taxis to take you to different places.

Face Bar was great... nice venue, good atmosphere, maybe a little bit pricey though for a Beijing bar. And here we are...



As I haven't asked any of these people (yet!) if they're willing to appear on my Blog, they will remain anonymous for the moment.



That'll be the end of this story (I have to keep some to myself) though the night was quite young as we left Face Bar........... :D

On Sunday, I finally decided to get my a** out of the hotel and grab a taxi to visit something somewhere someway. I made my way to Yonghegong and visited "The Confucius Temple and Guozi Jian"


















It was very nice but also very cold as most of the things to see were outdoors :)


































After that, I walked in the neighbourhood and slowly headed to HouHai to meet my friend Pat aka Pan Long! On the way, I accidentally found "El Dorado" which means for me the street on which probably 20 music shops are located... also known as Gulou Dongdajie!

While walking, I also tried to appreciate the efforts some shops make to become accessible to tourists but hey, can anybody explain this white banner to me..?

As well, I passed by the "Gulou Drum Tower" that I will definitely come back to as it looks very interesting... Under these 2 pictures, you'll find a very blurry video of it... I know you can't see much on it...



My map had been very handy throughout the day until I reached HouHai... Couldn't find the lake, didn't know where I was, it was getting really dark, talked to Pat on the phone who told me to get into a cyclo-thingy... I was a bit apprehensive as my language skills don't allow me (yet, let's hope!) to bargain the price. Anyway, I found one, told him where I wanted to go and when we got there, what had to happen happened... He asked me for 50 Yuan for a less than 5 minutes ride which was a real rip-off! My knight in shining armour came to my rescue right on time! Pat, I owe you big time!!! :D

I spent the rest of the evening with him, met some of his friends at their bar in HouHai "La Baie des Anges" and we then had dinner in the finest Japanese restaurant I've ever been to, "Hatsune". The food there was absolutely delicious!!! Check it out...



You must wonder if I ever have Chinese food. I swear I do, every day for breakfast and lunch! :)





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