Rainy day fun at Hongqiao (Pearl) Market

        Rain, rain, don’t go away, I’m going to shop anyway.  Since it was raining what better way than to take the bus to Hongquiao Market and go shopping inside the 7 story market outside of The temple of heaven.  The prices aren’t as crazy as the Silk Market.  You still need to haggle.  I feel there are more visitors here, because it’s right next door to a destination(Temple of Heaven).  Lots of people had their suitcases with them.  The Silk Market is just easy to get to at a subway stop, mostly the visitors are on lunch from a conference at a nearby hotel.
         We ate at the food court in the lower level, bypassing McD’s and Subway.  The rest of the places you order your food you get a ticket to pay at the one cashier stand then go back for your food.  Only 1 place sells drinks, we bought fancy drinks, I tried a kumquat lemonade.  Yummy.  My meal was a bowl of cold noodles with cucumbers and watermelon radish and chicken and sauce.  The sauce pictured was a different one I’ve had cold and expecting.  What I got was a peanut butter/seasame sauce.  Still good, just not what the picture showed.  Mine was 16 yuan, and I could only eat half.  The kids didn’t want kungpao chicken that comes over rice.  No, my kids want a different chicken and rice, which they won’t do as a combo like the kungpao.  Costs twice as much separate.  Oh well, they ate it all.  The bathroom by the food court had an automatic toilet paper machine.  You had to stand with your face in front of it for 3 seconds and it would spit out 4 squares of 3 ply tissue.
          The higher the level the fancier the jewelry was.  But we decided to take the escalators all the way to the top.  I’m glad we did, we were rewarded with a garden terrace.  The rain had stopped and we got an amazing view of Tiantan!  Since the floor had a layer of water on it, the boys were re-enacting the Kungfu Panda scene!
         Got some cool things, more breakables I need to carry.  The problem is you can’t buy too much from one vendor, they give you a good price on one or two items(which you can buy multiple of), but that third item they don’t want to budge on their price.  I guess they feel you will cave after they give you two of your prices.