After picking her up, the first place we visited was the famous Niu Jie Mosque, situated in the Muslim quarter of Beijing. Walking down the street, you could tell it was a Muslim street; everything is green with the typically Islamic patterns on all the buildings, and the street had the most Muslim's I had ever seen since being in Beijing. One thing I have to say though is that it's quite different from what I expected. I thought there would be a load of stalls in the street, almost like a market place, but it's a lot more modern than that. Apparently the street is actually famous because of the food and restaurants.
At the entrance of the mosque, we spotted a very Chinglish sign in the doorway.
The mosque area looked quite big on the map, but it's actually smaller than I thought it would be. There are quite a few areas though, including the prayer rooms (of course), an exhibition hall (but it was closed by the time we got there since it was after tourist hours), an Imam's grave area, courtyards and a teaching room.
After this, we walked for a good while - about 1 and a half hours - until we reached Tian Tan Gong Yuanr (Temple of Heaven). It was already 18:30 by this time so the temple was actually closed, but we still went in. It was a 8yuan entrance fee.
The temple area was actually lit up at night so even though we couldn't go inside it, we still managed to see some nice views of it's exterior. I'll be a coming back another time though during opening hours so I'm not too bothered about not seeing much this time round.
Whilst wandering around, since we were the only foreigners there, loads of people tried to sneakily take pictures of us which I found quite funny. I should've done the same back at them. Maybe next time. ;)
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