January 13, 2007

We woke up today to our last day in Beijing, as well as our last day in China. Part of my heart is sad, but part of me is also relieved to be heading home. Familiar foods and my own bed are starting to sound pretty good after two weeks here.

One of the reasons we decided to stay in this area of Beijing was because we would be within walking distance of the Forbidden City. At least that is what we thought.

Simon, our guide, wanted to pick us up by noon to drive us to the airport for our our outgoing flight at 3 p.m. That gave us a limited amount of time this morning to head over to the Forbidden City. Little did we know that walking there would not be a good idea, because even though it looked fairly close (Simon said it was a 10-15 minute walk), walking there caused us to arrive at a back corner and we ended up having to walk a very long time to get around to the front entrance and Tiananmen Square. We also should have clarified with Simon that a 15 minute walk was for an adult, and we had children with us, including a 6 year old whose legs just wouldn't keep up at the pace we needed to cover. Jeff ended up putting her on his shoulders for most of the walk.

We decided we didn't want the breakfast of rice congee that the hotel offered each morning and really didn't have time for their Western restaurant which was painfully slow, so we started our morning by thinking we would make a quick dash to a McDonald's that was on the way to the Forbidden City. We hadn't had a McDonald's breakfast the entire time and figured we could save time and money over the hotel restaurant. Unfortunately, we got a late start on our morning since we wanted to be totally packed and ready to go by the time Simon arrived, so after doing all of that and heading out, we arrived at the McDonald's at 9:55 only to be told that they stopped serving breakfast in five minutes and they wouldn't make any more breakfast foods.

With Alyssa's 18+ canker sores in her mouth, this was enough to reduce her to a puddle of tears because the last thing she wanted was a salty hamburger and french fries. She ended up nursing a shake while the rest of us tried gagging down a hamburger at 10 a.m. I ended up throwing most of mine in the garbage and we headed out to a close pharmacy to try and find some Motrin for Alyssa since we had run out the night before. Thankfully one woman in the pharmacy spoke enough English that with a dictionary we were able to get our point across and she sold us some Motrin. We needed a few more supplies before we left, and she directed us to a very large department store across the street.

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