An End to Journey Toward

Friday was a long day for us. We were picked up at 7am and didn't get home until around 7pm. A full twelve hour day. We hadn't had one of those in a while. Long as it was we had a really good time. We went to the Ming tombs, the Jade Factory, the Great Wall and the Silk Factory. The weather was not the most conducive to seeing the sights and distances that the Wall is known for providing. I was pretty excited that it was a nice cool day and that we even had some rain. The thick fog made for a bit more of an adventure as we were walking from tower to tower. As we couldn't see more than 50-100 meters ahead of us we never knew what was up ahead until it was right in our faces.

Yesterday we went to the "dirt" market and to Wangfujing Street. The street market was a HUGE flea market with pretty much anything and everything that you can imagine. From Chairman Mao paraphernalia to jewelry and Chinese antiques. It's fun to walk around and listen to the bartering and haggling going on around. Wangfujing Street is a pedestrian mall lined with large department stores and various other shops. Just behind Wangfujing is a smaller backstreet, called Wangfujing Snack Street, lined with noodle restaurants and a bit further down with souvenir shops.

After spending the day at the flea market we were famished so we sat down and ate some delicious noodles and beef stir-fry. As we were picking a place to eat the server at the place we chose was asking if we wanted noodles. His English was not very good though and we were having a hard time understanding him. In order to help us understand he pointed up to the banner hanging above the tables and said what we gather to be "You want noodles?" The funny thing was that he was pointing to a sign in Chinese to help us understand his English.

Everyone in the area was walking around with food on sticks. Those sticks held everything from grapes and haw covered in a sugary coating to starfish, beetles and scorpions. Quite a sight to behold. The most popular food-on-a-stick items seemed to be the haw and something that looked like it might have been the legs of a tiny little octopus. Couldn't really say for sure.

Well, here we are on our last evening in Beijing, our last night in China, our last night of the trip! My how these six weeks have flown by! We fly out tomorrow evening at 8:30 and will arrive in L.A. almost three hours before we left. Weird. We'll then be down in Palm Springs for a few days before actually heading home, Elizabeth to Pasadena and me to Portland. We'll be sure to let you know how our travels home go.

We're about to head out to celebrate an incredible journey. And so I will leave you with a quote I saw yesterday and think it is quite fitting in the last 24 hours of this trip: "It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end."--Ursula LeGuin.

Take care..