Today was the first day since the start of the trip where we did not set an alarm, we simply had to have checked out the room by noon. We both had a great night sleep once we chose which one of the 6 beds we fancied. I woke after 11 hours kip, and I grabbed my book and sat in the café with a cappuccino, so perfect. Jon surfaced a couple of hours after then we showered and put our bags in storage to go explore the final part of Beijing. After today we will have seen the top ten highlights of the city except the pandas in the zoo, as although I love Pandas, we both hate zoos.
We took the underground to the Lama Temple and surrounding park. We saw the elderly flying kites, playing some version of croquet competition and doing their exercises on the parks outside gym equipment. One lady in particular fascinated me as she stretched her leg above her head with ease. Amazing, I am sure we have this same equipment in Woodlands park probably just going rusty. We stayed in the park for a good few hours just people watching, very interesting and peaceful, bit of an eye opener. I really should explain the cheeky bum photo I took the other day, the toddlers here do not wear nappies, they just have the seam in their trousers unpicked so they are ready to be held over any public bin, gutter, flower bed etc at any given moment. I wanted a snap shot to remember this aspect of life but not sure its politically correct!
My favourite experience of the day was trying to communicate with a granddad and his young grandson. They were just chilling in the park with a picnic and the granddad was trying to teach his grandson how to pick up bits of leaves with chop sticks made from tiny twigs. It was so lovely to see. We then took the underground to the business district literally to hop off and photograph the CCTV building that is a funky shape. As we made our way back to the hostel for 5pm the sun was setting across one of the huge traffic junctions. We received help from the hostel to pick up a taxi from the main road as it was rush hour. Finally one pulled over and an hour later we arrived on the other side of town at the Beijing West Train Station. This journey was quite possibly the worst taxi ride either of us have ever experienced. The driver was hawking up God knows what the entire journey and spitting it out his window in spectacular fashion. The noise was very disturbing and it took my entire concentration not to throw up. I sat the whole way with my fingers in my ears.
We arrived at the train station an hour early so we grabbed some dinner in KFC this time. To give us credit we attempted a few local restaurants but there was no English Menu and seeing as we are on a train tonight, we felt it best to eat something safe! We made our way through to the waiting area and before long we were getting on the train to Xian. We found our carriage but as we went to get on, a Chinese guide with 20 Germans were asking us to swap so that their group could stay together. We did a good deed and swapped and shared with two locals. The cabin was modern and clean. We had two bottom bunks but before long with the door shut there is just stale air and I could not get to sleep fully clothed and in jeans.
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