ESKIMO TOURS

Doing what parents do, they had both communicated with their friends and colleagues about me leaving for a 3-month internship in China. As the word got around, one of my father’s colleagues sent him an email while at work one day.

“Graeme, I have some in-laws who live in Beijing that have offered to guide Georgia around Beijing, would she be interested?”

I made contact with them instantly as I was super keen to meet more locals to show me around. I spent two days with the couple travelling to the Summer Palace and Temple of Heaven along with several famous Beijing restaurants.

The weather was still so cold, but no more snow. Each day I was wearing minimum 4 layers of clothes, 2 layers of socks, gloves and a hat. The couple even provided me with this massive eskimo coat which was so warm.

Summer Palace was so beautiful, I never imagined it to be as big as it was, and we were walking for hours! Yet again, I had worn my black-heeled boots, so I had broken feet by the end of the day. It was so nice to go exploring around the area, it was so busy, full of Chinese families, hardly any tourists. The lakes were completely frozen; I would’ve loved to go ice-skating on them! The traditional temples and artwork were magnificent, so much hard work and imagination gone into it all through the long history. That afternoon I was taken to a famous Peking Duck restaurant where I was able to indulge into Beijing specialities of vegetables, meat and duck! Very delicious foods, I was so impressed!

Day 2 consisted of adventures to the Temple of Heaven. It was such a magnificent day walking to each of the temples surrounding the big one and then finally reaching the heaven temple. It was such an achievement to reach the Temple of Heaven! I’ve always wanted to go here and I was finally able to tick it off my bucket list. After the big trek of temples, we popped into another famous restaurant and had a late lunch.

Before heading back home, we visited the father-in laws office at the brain surgical and science laboratory. The office was filled with some very high-tech equipment and a tonne of photos of his successful students. I was able to try the work uniform on and have a practice on the machines, which was amazing. I'm so thankful to have connected with these lovely in-laws of my fathers colleague- I was very lucky!

#templeofheaven #summerpalace #whitegirlinasia