Beijing: About to Fly

NOTE:  This was sent out in e-mail on March 19th because, at the time, we were in Beijing and China blocks access to "Blogger".  Here 'tis now March 26th and, I'm beginning to get caught up.  Hopefully soon, I'll get working on the some 22 ports that we didn't document.
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'tis March 19th, we're all packed up and just waiting until time for our ride to the airport.  That will be in about 2 hours.  Just a very brief update on our journeys in Beijing.  The first pic is a typical mid-day sun in Beijing!  Most of the time, we wore masks.

The ship docked in Tianjin, the port for Beijing.  We had one day there before we disembarked and we chose the Great Wall at Tianjin, southwest of Beijing, for our excursion that day.  Note the wall on the hills behind us.  No, we didn't climb that far but did go a fair ways up in front of where we were standing.

Off the boat now and headed for our hotel, we stopped at the Forbidden City.  This is just outside the South Gate.

The next day, we were off to another section of the Great Wall, this one northeast of Beijing.  This area was MUCH steeper than the section a couple of days ago.  We did climb up the section behind us but not much further.  At least we can officially say we have climbed the Great Wall TWICE!

On our last full day in Beijing, we visited Tiananmen Square, the largest square in the world (so we were told!).  It was too cold to take pictures there!  Second stop was the Temple of Heaven.  We were so very fortunate to actually have a clear day with blue sky and Florida like sunshine!

Our last evening at the hotel, we stopped for a couple of drinks.  We thought Sweden was expensive until we had a couple of drinks here.  At $46 for 2 drinks, it was right up there with Monte Carlo!  Oh well, we're only young once and we were still well within budget!

It's about time to shut down the computer and do that one final check before we vacate our room.  Our flight leaves at 5pm, arrives Newark at 6:45pm.  Adding the 12 hours we will have lost, it is a 13h 45m flight.  We'll leave Newark at 9pm and are scheduled to arrive Tampa at 11:58pm.  Hopefully, we'll be out of the airport my 12:30 and home by 1am.

Ahhhh!  Home Sweet Home!  This will be the last post until we're home again.

 rf