Beijing Day Three - Chinese New Year's

So for New Year's Day Eliza and I thought we would try the temples again since we had heard from various people at the hostel and online websites that many temples have festivals and carnivals on New Year's.  We tried the Lama Temple again.
We had to get off the subway one stop away and were immediately in the middle of a large crowd making their way towards the temple.  With the fireworks and just the sheer amount of people Eliza and I both felt like we were in a warzone with bombs going off around us as we walked.

So many people making their way to the temple.

The walk took about an hour to reach the temple and there was a very large police force present making sure things did not get too out of hand and to help people stay within the set perimeters of walking.
We finally made it to the Lama Temple and were disappointed to find that there was no festival just all the people we had walked with there burning incense and praying at the various halls.

The main entrance to Lama Temple.

Upon getting inside the temple we were surrounded by a sheer wall of incense smoke. 

Some people had put money into this lion's mouth, I am assuming as a prayer for good luck or something similar. 

It was a very beautiful temple despite all the smoke.

After the Lama Temple, we were both tired of all the people so we took a small break at a coffee place and then tried to catch the subway at a different station than the original one we had gotten off at.  That didn't work because as we were again surrounded by hundreds of people we found that they were actually closing the gate to the station so we had no other recourse to walk back in the direction of the hostel which was only technically two stops away from the Lama temple, we just had no idea of the distance that actually covered.
We didn't leave the hostel again and because pretty much everything was closed due to the holiday we ate dinner in the hostel again.