Beijing: Yikes, only up to September 15th!

Beijing, as you may already know, is very famous for its many markets. What a "hardship" visiting them but we did and I, for one, enjoyed every moment too. Steven lagged a bit toward the end of the fifth or sixth one but I can't blame him for that!

As it was Sunday, we hightailed it to a market called Panjiayuan aka Dirt Market or the Sunday Market (but also open on Saturdays!) I had read that it was hands down the best place to shop for arts, crafts, antiques, calligraphy, Cultural Revolution memorabilia, Buddha heads, ceramics and even Tibetan carpets. I knew that bargaining was the name of the game here and the vendors would start at 10 times the real price so we had to aim low initially. You'll see from the photos how crazy and frenetic it is with row upon row of all the same stalls containing, for instance, just calligraphy paintings and then again umpteen rows of more stalls containing only beautiful embroidered items; then the same for everything else. Steven decided to walk around by himself after we were there for about 2 hours before meeting up again - a good choice for both of us.
Finally dragged ourselves off via the marvelous metro to the Temple of Heaven in the southeastern part of central Beijing for a welcome respite from all that shopping. It's also known as the Altar of Heaven and is a complex of religious buildings. It has been one of the holiest places in all of China for more than 500 years.
The Temple's Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests has a triple eaved roof, each covered with blue, yellow and green tiles. They are, respectively the symbols for Heaven, Earth and the Mortal World.
That building is supported by 12 pillars representing the 4 seasons and 12 months of the year.

Photos to make sense of all of this for you!

Steven happy at beginning of our foray to Panjiayuan Market!

Paintbrushes anyone?

This lady had beautiful embroidered items for sale.

I must have seen about 100 stalls at the very least where beaded bracelets, necklaces, rings etc were sold. For the first 40 or so, it was amazing and fantastic but after that, even I got a little bug eyed and that was only the beads, mind you, not all the other items available for "window shopping" or buying. Perish the shopper who decided to wait and see what else might be available to buy before making a decision AND then try to find the first stall again. Yup, it did happen to me!

Beads anyone?!

Beijing's metro: we thought it was the best of any this trip in terms of ease of use for tourists we've used as all signs and announcements inside the stations themselves as well as on the trains are in English too; only 2 yuan or .33 per ticket anywhere the metro goes; all bags, etc had to go through security at each station.

There were entrance doors to almost all the metro stops.; each stop had very precise spots to line up and for people to get off each train; Certainly very orderly and it made for quick entry and exit from each train.