As the city was used as a retreat for the Royal Palace, the major sight to visit is the Royal Palace. I think I'm reaching the point where I know exactly what to expect from a grand Chinese palace. Single story building, with large rooms consisting of one wall entirely made from windows to open up onto a large courtyard. This palace was exactly that. Again, this is another time where I realise that I'm very lucky to have travelled so much and had a basis for comparison. 

Within the palace complex were beautiful large gardens with a calming green lake. Being of a slightly competitive nature, I suggested a pedalo race in the lake, to which everyone obliged. I have nothing to say about the race other than; we lost. End of that.

The gardens were actually so big that they had a shuttle bus service that charged £5 to drive you around the grounds, stopping at the temples, concubine quarters, and summer houses dotted amongst the trees, whilst drizzle fell from a grey sky. The bus shuttle tour took a lot longer than expected and by the end of it we were starving. I was also craving some decent western food and I remembered passing a restaurant aptly named ‘Western Food’ so we headed there. This turned out to be my second failure of the day. Terrible. Absolutely terrible. Made only better by heading to the restaurant next door for waffles for desert. 

Back at the hotel we sat in the corridor using the wifi because it didn't work in our rooms. Wifi is generally slow enough in China without having to use a VPN as well. 

Annlee and I ran across the road to the café for a dinner of Chinese hamburgers and Tsingtao before meeting the group in KTV for some karaoke. As expected, Loes smashed it. Again. However, the black horse of the evening was Jason! He did a Chinese number, a ballad if anything and he was great!!