China, Day Eleven: Back to Beijing

We left the hotel before breakfast this morning, in order to catch a 8:40am flight back to Beijing. We were now unravelling our journey and in some ways Beijing seemed like a well trodden and familiar place to us. It felt like ages since we left there.

The weather seemed to have followed us back and although it wasn't snowing it was damned cold. I mean really cold. The day's schedule seemed more like a chore than something to enjoy - taking a rickshaw through the hutong/alleyway part of town wasn't that fantastic, and we bailed after an hours' shopping on Wangfujin Street, deciding the warmth of the hotel would be a much better place to spend our time in.

Compared to Xian, Lanzhou and Linxia, today wasn't much fun. The same strict and inflexible guide as before didn't really help, and we wished we could go back to eating the food we had found much more agreeable in the western part of China.

It seems that the end of our trip to China had begun a few days early.