It’s a Small World After All

While it would have been interesting to go back to the Summer Palace, it felt good to not need to rush out in the morning. It would have also been another close to 2 hours in the car, so I decided that hanging out with the girls again would be a better idea. Plus I wanted to do some shopping while we were in Beijing.

We all got packed up and checked out of the hotel, and left our bags at the front desk while we set out for the day. Given how questionable the hotel was, we were all glad that we didn’t opt in for the breakfast option. Instead, we grabbed some yogurt at the 7-11 and some little pastries from a bakery at the mall.

We then hopped onto the Beijing Subway to head up to the Pearl Market to do some shopping. We were just walking around looking at all the shops, when I looked up and saw none other that Sarah, David, and Eric wandering through the same market. I knew that Sarah was going to be in Beijing at the same time, but we didn’t make any specific plans to meet or even communicate that we’d be in the same place. This was a completely chance meeting in a city of 22 million people. Even the pearl market itself is 5 floors with nearly 100 shops per floor. It’s really strange how some of these things work out.

The pearl market sells just about anything: scarfs, luggage, belts, electronics, jewelry, bags, and, of course, pearls. Everything there is negotiable and you have to be ready to walk away and bargain hard if you don’t want to be taken advantage of. Given that I haven’t delivered the gifts yet, I can’t go into details, but I was very pleased with my purchases, both from a price and quality of the items purchased perspective. I also had some validation that what I was getting was good from all of my shopping assistants, namely Katherine, Maria, and Susa.

When we were all shopped out, we took the subway back towards the hotel as our time in Beijing was already coming to a quick end. We stopped for lunch in the mall and got some really nice food from the same Chinese chain we had in the Qingdao mall with the Chinese pork sandwiches. Now that I’ve had them in a few places, I’ve come to understand that the ones they have there really are the best. We also had some nice Chinese cabbage, cauliflower, and spicy pork and peppers.

We then hoofed it back to the hotel to pick up our bags and catch up with the rest of the gang. Our things were all still there (I was a bit worried), and we split up again (boys with Katherine, girls with Zoey) since Susa’s back was a bit sore and the rest of the girls weren’t crazy about taking the subway to the train station. The subway system here in Beijing is super easy to use and very cheap. It cost about 60 cents to get all the way to the train station. It was a bit crowded, but not uncomfortably so. Coincidentally, the two groups arrived at nearly exactly the same time — and with plenty of time to spare. That being said, we again were on the last train for the evening and really didn’t want to chance missing our train.

If there was a downside to getting there that early was that there was virtually no seating around, so we piled all of our bags together and took turns sitting on the floor guarding our luggage. The ticket checking and boarding process is definitely a bit chaotic. It’s essentially every man for themselves trying to get to the ticket checkpoint. Pushing, line hopping, people getting pissed off… It’s kind of like Black Friday at Wal-Mart.

The train itself is really a nice way to travel, even in second class. The seats have a nice recline to them and there’s plenty of leg room. The group was a bit more spread out this time, but still 7 of us were sitting together in two consecutive rows. The ride gave me a chance to catch up a bit on writing these blogs and to just relax for a bit. I was sitting next to Katherine and Zoey, so it was also easy for me to just pull out a magazine and read a bit to give them a chance to get some much needed rest as we’ll have a long week ahead of us.

The train ride itself went by really quickly — seemingly much more so than the ride there — which I found out was actually the case as it was an hour shorter trip. It was also amazing how quick we were able to get back when there was no traffic. The same roads that take 45 minutes in the afternoons took only 15 at 11 PM. Needless to say, I was not complaining about getting back to the hotel.