April 27 Friday
Final day in Beijing
Friday morning brought a bit of rain to the city. Nevertheless, we decided to walk about a bit before our tour bus saddled us up for our final day of sightseeing.
Here is a typical scene in Beijing and in much of China: people commuting on bicycles.
My dad and I standing in front of the Tiananmen Gate.
Our sightseeing for the day... shopping... argh! We were dropped off at the famed Silk Alley where you can buy silk of course but also just about anything else you could imagine. It was funny to watch the bargaining that goes on. Europeans armed with calculators to show the shopkeeper how much they would be willing to pay. The merchant punches up numbers on his/her calculator to counter offer!
TRAVEL TIP:
The Beijing portion of our trip was with a group tour. There are pluses and minuses of going this route.
The biggest plus is the airfare and hotel costs are much reduced. We stayed in the Palace Hotel. It is a very nice hotel and far better than anything I’m used to staying in. The tour group enters the various sites free of charge. The bus driver knows his way around the city and you get the running commentary of the guide.
However, this benefit was somewhat lost on me as our guide spoke Cantonese! My uncle, aunt and my dad are quite comfortable in Cantonese. I can understand simple conversational Cantonese but when he was sharing history, politics and culture, I had to rely on the condensed version my dad would give me during a lull in the narration.
The down side of the tour is that I find the pace to be too brisk. I like to linger at sites. In the tour it was often, okay be back to the bus in 30 minutes! One particularly egregious case was our stop at the Great Wall. My dad and I made it up to the top in one hour and made it back with some time to spare before the bus took off. However, some others in our group who weren't quite as energetic got near the top and looked at their watches and decided to turn back.
The other big downside is that the tour dropped us off at a number of shopping venues. I imagine these venues pay the tour companies to drop off the walking piggy banks err ... tourists. As you can tell I'm not a big shopping fan. If speed shopping were an Olympic event, I'd enter and probably do pretty well. In defense of the places they drop us off at, those stores tend to have better quality goods. One may get better prices from street vendors but the adage buyer beware is absolutely to be adhered to on the streets.
Continue the journey.
Go back one page.
Return to the home page.