We took the bullet train back to Beijing to catch our flight the next day. We didn't know when we made this trip that we should have just flown home from Xi'an, but instead we took the train again. It wouldn't have been so bad if we had the bullet train, but our tour didn't tell us that we had the train that stopped at every single stop, and it took about 7 hours to get back to Beijing. We didn't get in until about 1 am. The kids were tired, crying and us adults were pretty annoyed. At first we were super worried we were on the wrong train since it kept stopping. Out train to Xi'an only stopped once or twice, but this one seemed to stop every ten minutes or so. We talked to a few people and found out this is not a direct train, and we would be on it for a long time.
Brian picked us up and we went straight to our hotel. We all slept in and got some good sleep. After the kids ate breakfast they all started begging to go swimming at the hotel pool. The reason we picked this hotel was because it did have an indoor pool. We went down to the pool and found out that swim caps were required and we didn't bring any. They had a sign with a cap for $2, so we grabbed four caps and gave them $8 and started walking away. The hotel employee then starts calling after us in rapid Chinese, and after hand gestures, pointing and a calculator, we guessed that they didn't have $2 caps or were just trying to get more money out of us, and only had $8 cap and we needed to pay him $24 more dollars. After dealing with that fiasco, and feeling like we were totally taken advantage of, we finally got in the pool.
All the kids except for Monster could swim, so they were jumping and splashing and playing Marco Polo all over the pool. The kids started to get their own spectators and one by one the Chinese hotel employees started gathering by the pool. I guess it's not normal for kids to know how to swim, because they were in amazement at the kids just swimming all over the pool on their own.
While we were having fun, a 20 year old looking girl came into the pool with a life vest and kick board and leg float and was slowly trying to get around in the pool. She seemed to be having swim lessons from someone, and we couldn't help but giggle because she had so many floats on her.
We got out of the pool, packed up our luggage and met Brian and our van driver. While we were driving around Beijing we kept passing by a beautiful park with an old looking wall. We found out from Brian that it is the old Beijing City Wall. The trees were so pretty and the wall was so neat looking that we convinced him to pick us up early for our flight and make a quick stop at the park. So we piled in the van and went to visit our last stop in China, the Beijing Ming City Wall Ruin Park.
Our favorite thing about the park was the tree blossoms. There were blossoms everywhere and in every color. We wanted to get close and get some pictures, but Brian said we were not allowed on the grass and can only see them from a distance.
The park caught our eyes because the beautiful wall. We learned that it is 550 years old and is the longest and best preserved section on the city's Mong Dynasty city wall.
I know I already mentioned the flowers, but there were a few that we got close to. It was just so pretty.
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