We awoke early, as
usual, but stayed in the room and got ready for our return to the US. Since we didn’t leave for the airport until
11:30 we had some time. We met up with Mark
and Cindy to go for a morning walk. We
had seen a park near the Beijing
Ritz Carlton Financial Street when we checked
online maps. We wanted to have a late
breakfast that would allow us to eat lunch a little later in the afternoon.
Because this is the
first day of the Golden Week holiday, we wanted to stay away from attractions
that typically attract Chinese tourists. We had seen so many people the day
before in the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square that we knew that we did not
want to go in that direction today.
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| Writing Chinese characters in water on the sidewalk |
We found the small
park after walking only a short distance.
There tends to be a small fee to enter parks in China. Having an entry fee provides a funding source
to provide for cleaning and upkeep. In
addition, the entry fee helps to keep vagrants out of the park.
This small park was
very well kept and clean. There were maintenance
staff constantly cleaning and making the park more attractive. There was a nice selection of trees and
shrubs that were all labeled in English and Chinese. The grass was well groomed and there wasn’t a
shred of litter to be seen. One of the
buildings was getting a new roof of the grey tiles that are so common
throughout China.
Mark and I looked for
a geocache while we were in the park.
After a short hunt, Mark was able to make the find of a small metal can
covered in camo tape. I was happy to
find one last geocache while we were in China.
We walked on for a bit
and saw a man writing on the sidewalk with a large sponge brush and water. We watched him for some time creating the
Chinese characters on the concrete.
There was also a man juggling a large yoyo as he exercised.
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| Man exercising with a yoyo in a Beijing park |
We took the short walk
back to our hotel and checked out before going to a late breakfast at the
hotel. We especially enjoyed our last
Chinese breakfast. We will certainly
miss the selection of Asian vegetables and items that we don’t usually get at
home. Even more, it was a nice treat to
have someone cooking and cleaning up for us.
I have some to enjoy the yams and sweet potatoes and the rice congee at
meals. Mary will miss the dumplings stuffed
with everything from pork to shrimp to bean paste.
We got on the bus taking
us to the airport at 11:30 and made the trip to the airport in less than an
hour. We had no issues getting through
security although there were long lines. and we knew it would take a while. We saw a few people from the Viking trip once
we were through security, but they went to different areas of the huge Beijing
airport. We sat with Mark and Cindy
until near our boarding time then we walked to our gate and caught our
flight.
Our seatmate was a
lady from Detroit who has been living in China since her husband works for Ford
and is assigned to China. She was
interesting and had some great insights into living in China as an American.
We dozed a little and
watched a few movies to while away the time on the flight. I hoped that I could sleep for much of the
flight but I was only able to nap a little.
I knew it would be difficult to adjust to the 12 hour time difference
back in the US. We had heard that our
bodies require one day to adjust for each time zone crossed. By that reckoning we would be nearly two
weeks recovering from the jet lag after returning from China.
We arrived in Detroit
to change planes. We picked up our bags
from the international flight and took them to security for the short domestic
flight from Detroit to Cincinnati. There
were no issues getting through customs or security. We didn’t have a lot of time to spend at the
Detroit airport but had plenty of time to get to our flight.
We got to Cincinnati a
little before 6 pm and had a nice surprise waiting on us. Sarah came to the Cincinnati airport to meet
us and drive us to the airport Hilton Hotel where we used OneStopParking to park the car during our vacation. It was great to see Sarah and to hear how she
and the Koehlers were doing while we were away.
We made the drive from
the Cincinnati airport to our home in a little over an hour. When we got home we had another nice
surprise. Emily had stocked the refrigerator
for us. We had cleaned most of the
perishables out of the house in anticipation of our three week trip so we were
very scarce on food. It was nice to have
food there waiting on us.
Although we are still
sleeping on air mattresses at the house, we had no trouble sleeping. We were still excited from all of the things
we had seen and done on our trip we were still happy to be home. We were anxious to see family and friends and
get back in a normal routine.
