Week 3 - 4: Visit temples and weekend trip to the sea

Everything revolves around the Mid-Autumn Festival here in September. There are mooncakes everywhere, some delicious and some acquired taste.

The Mid-Autumn Festival is a holiday in China.

The legend of the Mid-Autumn Festival: there were once 10 suns in the sky that burned everything. Hou Yi, a hero, came and shot down nine of them. He was rewarded by the queen with an elixir that made him immortal. However, he wanted to be with his wife Chang'e. She kept the elixir for him. Many men wanted to be Hou Yi's master and became his disciples. But one of them (Feng Meng) wanted to steal the elixir. He went to Hou Yi's wife and tried to persuade her to give him the elixir, but in vain. She knew she couldn't defeat him, so she drank it herself. The elixir made her immortal and she flew up to the moon. Since then, people have prayed to the moon and Chang'e for luck and security.

On the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival, when the children had school, we went to the hutongs to visit the Lama Temple. But since all the other Chinese also had a day off, it was very crowded. So we went to the Confucius Temple, where it was a bit quieter, and visited it. A small but fine temple with an interesting show that tells the legend of Confucius. Finn finished school early and we picked him up after visiting the hutongs. The three of us went to the Natural History Museum, which had free admission. A huge building, with multiple floors, that was what Finn liked. With dinosaur skeletons and a dinosaur world with moving dinosaurs. Also all the animals of this world: from the jungle to the Arctic. In the basement, there was an aquarium, which had seen better days. Everything was a bit cramped and musty. All the fish had too little space. Without the aquarium, it would have been a top destination.

Leonie's friend came to us in the afternoon, we had a fun Singstar evening followed by watching Jumanji; she stayed until Saturday morning.

On Saturday, the four of us set off: about 300 km to the sea, to Beidaihe on the Bohai Sea. We made good progress until we reached our hotel, the Sheraton. It was an older hotel, but with a large room, great breakfast, and a large pool. A highly recommended hotel. It took about 20 minutes to walk to the beach. The place is a beautiful seaside resort, with a nice beach promenade and an unbeatable 'food street', where we were simply amazed, so we went there in the afternoon and again in the evening. Booth after booth lined up, there was nothing that didn't exist. Many skewered things, especially octopus, which was more for René. Great ice cream, various fries, great tropical juices, all the fruits in the world, lots of fish, crustaceans, and more, which 'unfortunately' lived their lives in mini tanks until someone ordered them, and then they were freshly cooked. That's not for us. Nevertheless... the colorful hustle and bustle of this street is insane. In the evening, there are vendors who set up their motorcycles with trailers in the middle of the street and sell nuts, cakes, and more from their motorcycles. The highlight was: colorful smoke balls that smoked when eaten.

On Sunday, after a great European-Asian breakfast, we went to another section of the beach where we had to pay a small entrance fee. It was even better than Saturday. Nice loungers, good showers, a small supermarket. Plus a blue sky and water over 20 degrees Celsius. All good things must come to an end, but we still had a 300 km journey in rush hour traffic ahead of us; and that's exactly what happened: traffic jam, traffic jam, traffic jam on the way back, and we didn't arrive back in Beijing until evening. But this trip to the sea was not our last in this area.