Day 4

Sydnee slept in an hour later than she has been all week so we got up at 5 a.m.  Had breakfast early this morning in the hotel and headed out to take the subway to the shops.  The subways are just as packed as their roads are with cars.   There is no personal space and I felt like we were trying to set a world record or something for the number of people in one subway car.  It seemed like for every person that got off the car, 8 people got on.  It was crazy.  Subway car doors do not give like elevator doors do.  We saw a gentleman try to make it on as the doors were closing and how he got his arm out of the door before we started moving is beyond me.  Made it to the shops and haggled over some items, that is always fun.  Kind of reminds me of car shopping.  Tell them price that they you are willing to pay and if they don't like it, just say no and move on to the next shop and start out the lowest price the other shop was willing to sale the item for.  We went to a second set of shops and had some lunch there.  We decided that we were going to stick around a little longer to get the girls some ice cream.  So we told the guide to go ahead and go on home, that we would take taxis back to the hotel.  Well I guess I should have figured it wasn't as simple as it seemed.  The first group got in the first taxi and they traveled on.  Erika, Sydnee, Alex and I got in the second taxi and I showed the driver our room key to the hotel and he told me he didn't know where it was at.  So we had to get out of the taxi and got into the second taxi.  Again, I showed him my key card and he said he didn't know.  I was like how in the world can you not know where the Holiday Inn Downtown Beijing is?  Well we got in the third taxi; he studied the card for a couple of minutes, and I was thinking great another failed taxi service.  He shook his head yes, and we got in.  We were stopped at a stop light through 4 lights and couldn't move anywhere.  The driver got out, looked at the traffic, mumbled to himself and got back in the car and turned left on red.  We ended up going down a few side streets and I was hoping that he truly new where the hotel was and not planning on us seeing Beijing again. After a few side streets, I finally saw the Forbidden City so at least I was in some type of familiar area.  About 30 minutes later, we finally made it back to the hotel.  Wow, what a trip.  Tonight is the last night in Beijing.  We will get up in the morning and have breakfast and a little later in the afternoon, we will be making our way to the airport to head to Anhui.  We should touchdown in Anhui around 4:30 or 5:00 p.m.