Beijing, China (Days 3 & 4)

Day 3, I woke to another wonderful breakfast. Being up earlier than my travel companions, I got to enjoy the view from my hotel room. I watched the sun rise on the Forbidden City. It was just beautiful.

After they were up, we decided to head out silk shopping. I asked the porter to get us a cab to the Beijing Silk Store (a store listed in our travel book). Well, apparently he didn't know that so he sent us to Xiushui. This wasn't a bad deal, just unexpected, and would not enable us to walk back to the hotel as I'd hoped. Oh well...

Xiushui (Silk Street) is an interesting place. It's jam packed with little stalls. The proprietor of each yelling "hey lady, I give you good price, you want ?, I give you morning price, you friend, etc" It's deafening after a while and certainly overwhelming. Turns out, they don't like you to help others haggle, either. You get dragged away to other shops while your friend struggles with her purchase. Oh well, I stuck to my own haggling and came away with a jacket, a pants outfit for RC, and about 15m of silk to make skirts with. I also got a cheap (<$8) pearl and jade necklace that I'll restring to make it look nicer. The prices weren't great, but certainly cheaper than I would have paid in the US. Most people carried about the same stuff and deals were to be had by going from shop to shop pricing things out. It was fun, but exhausting after a couple of hours.

Once we exhausted our shopping, we had to find a cab to the Hard Rock Cafe. I wanted shirts to add to the collection. I had the address in English from the web site. A nice woman at information wrote it in kanji for us and we got there. Lunch was typical fare, but I got my shirt.

Back to the hotel to unload and then a quick stop out to the Beijing Zoo to see the pandas. They had 3 and it was dinner time so we got to watch them gorge themselves on their bamboo. They were pretty cute to watch. It was brutally cold so we didn't stop to wander the rest of the zoo, but got another cab back to the hotel.

Interesting note on the cabs in Beijing - it only cost us 20-30 RMB to get anywhere from our hotel ($2-$4). Secondarily, if it hadn't been for the little post card map I found in the hotel stationary pouch, we might still be stuck at Xiushui. No one had any idea where our hotel was, must less by "Novotel" or "Peace Hotel." Each drive would pore over the map and eventually get us there, but it took many viewings of the map.

Furthermore, driving there seems to be at your own risk. They often use the white lines as guidance for the center of the car. It's worse than NYC or Boston and I detest both of those from a driving perspective.

We opted for the hotel buffet again and then had massages at the spa. I have very sensitive skin and (as Chrys has always worried) didn't enjoy most of the massage. I liked the face, head, neck. The lower back I could have done without as that was feeling very sensitive that night. It wasn't expensive and a good way to test it out. I did feel relaxed so she must have worked out any kinks despite my tensing up at the pressure in some locations. I've had a Swedish Massage recommended as my next experience. After packing and shower, I was out for the night.

The guide picked us up at 6:30 the next morning (just last enough to allow a quick pass at the breakfast buffet). We got the airport and through customs without incident. We flew to Dalian. We circled Dalian. We were rerouted to Tsentsing (or something). We waited for a couple of hours. We flew back to Dalian and observed the multiple inches of snow they were still shoveling in certain areas. We finally got to Fukuoka 4 hours late and, after I got searched by customs, drove home.