China Day 5

On to day five!

This was our last day in Beijing so we had to check out of our hotel first thing in the morning and load our suitcases onto a truck that would meet us at the airport later that day.

This is the 80-story building that was next door to our hotel.  It's so tall I couldn't fit it all into one picture!

Our first adventure of the day was at a local pearl store.  It was another sales pitch, but also informational about fresh water pearls.  They even opened an oyster up for us to see where they get the pearls.

After the pearl store, we went to the summer palace.

(You can still tell that we're in Beijing because of the haze)

This guy was there practicing his calligraphy on the black stone walkways.  We found a few places where people would come and do this.  This guy was really good even with English cursive.

We learned about the Dragon Lady and her love of power.

The summer palace is next to a lake.  In case you can't tell, it's covered in ice, pretty thick ice at that.  People keep asking about the weather while I was there...well folks, it was cold!

We then went to lunch.  After lunch we stopped by the Olympic venues to stretch our legs a bit before our flight to Shanghai.  Two ladies from the group got lost and we had to hunt them down so we wouldn't be late for our flight.

The rest of the day was spent in airports, airplanes, a bus and then the hotel.  The hotel room was amazing!  Nice sitting area separated from the sleeping area and a huge bathroom.  Before going to bed, we took a walk around the block to check things out.  I immediately liked Shanghai better than Beijing as the weather was warmer (drizzly, but warmer), the air was better, and the city just felt more familiar (there was more of a western influence in Shanghai than Beijing).  On our walk, we found nine tobacco shops and four fruit stands.  Our tour guide told us that China has 1/5 of the world's population but 1/3 of the world's smoking population.  Let's just say there was a lot of smoke around.  At the end of our walk, we stopped in KFC (they're pretty big there) for some ice cream.