Our Honeymoon

Our honeymoon happened two months after our actual wedding ceremony. We spent one week seeing all kinds of interesting sites in Beijing. Summer palace was my favourite among all the places we had been to. It was totally worth the trip. We chose a sepcially hot day to go (didn't mean to!) and planned a half day there! We thought we could have gone to all the other interesting places near there-like Qing Hua Universaty or Yi He Yuan, but it was such an beautiful place and so huge too. We ended up staying there for a full day and didn't even see all the sites in the single garden! At the end of the day, I have to say that the emperors really knew how to enjoy themselves. Since they didn't have to time or energy to travel all over China, they had the idea of putting together a minuature garden of various interesting and famous spots originated from every corner of China to entertain themselves whenever they wanted. How brilliant that was! Of all the beautiful places in the whole world to go, my dream is to stand in Tibet one day, so of course we went to the Tibet temple while we were there. And also we went to Suzhou Street-the paradise of the earthy world, which was very close to the end of the other gate. Since we had been roaming around for the whole day, we were on the point of breaking down when we thought about having to walk a short distance to the busway station back to our hotel. Simon suggested to stop by a tea house before we got off. Thinking about the natural idea of over-charging in tourist spots, I objected his idea firmly at the beginning. He comprimised by offering to go upstairs and having a look at the tea house first. Guess what!? The moment we got into the tea house, I was absolutely struck by their unearthily peaceful world. I agreed and we chose a cool spot sheltered by trees and cicadas. The tea was served in a set of gordeous yellow tea set, and together they gave us a small plate of pickles and watermelon seeds! This was just terrific. I couldn't have been happier when I saw unexpected pickles and seeds! I made sure I finished it all off.
Speaking of hotels, we lived in Guo Han Hotel - our favourite among all the others in Beijing. The picture here was taken just inside of it. We shopped in Silk Market that day and got all dressed up after we were back to the hotel. Simon wanted to try "Liang Ma River" - a fairly new restaurant around San Li Tun area back then. The photo was taken on our way to or back from the the restaurant. I can't recall which.
The skirt I was wearing there is one of my favourite ones too. I brought it to Canada and wore it quite often. Lots of people wondered where I had got it. When I told them "China", they opened their eyes wide and smiled, "no kidding, very pretty".