I woke up at about 8, catching up on some sleep after the mountain adventure yesterday. I showered and packed up, and fiddled around on the computer for a little bit before heading down to breakfast at 8:30. We checked out of the hotel at 9 am, and took the bus over to jinxi (i think that’s the name of it.)
It’s one of the oldest towns in the area, although there’s really only one street that has the original architecture.
It took about an hour to get over there. Most of the time was spent with the folks who had planned to stay longer trying to figure out what they were going to do. Since it’s national holiday week, everything’s booked pretty solid, and they weren’t having much luck finding hotels or transportation.
I walked through the old street for a couple hours once we got to the town. It was about as expected, pretty much entirely a tourist trap. I got an old painting, really just a silk screen. It apparently is quite famous, but the quality leaves a lot to be desired. I bargained for 30 kuai, and probably could have gotten it for less.
Afterward I met up with some of the other groups and we wandered around a bit more. We stopped in a coffee shop off the main road. It turned out to be owned by a guy from beijing who spoke good english. Rebecca got a latte and mary got an order of fries. Most of the others were off at a bus station at this point trying to buy bus tickets. We read through their guest book at the coffee shop, noticed a lot of people from canada and western europe, and signed it ourselves.
Near the end I got some bubble tea from a stand that was quite passable. Max got a bag of pieces of fried chicken on toothpicks. He complained that they had been fried much more than needed.
at 1 we got back on the bus, it turned out that everyone had decided to go to hefei, because the only buses from jinxi were for the next day and there weren’t any hotels or hostels in the city that they could find.
The drive back to hefei was about 4 hours, and we got in at 6 ish. We stopped for a while at a rest station to stop our legs, and also apparently to delay our arrival since there was some sort of discount the tour guide would have to give us if we got to the airport too early.
I napped on and off and looked at the scenery passing by.
The airport was small as we’d seen upon exit. We couldn’t check in until an hour and a half before the flight, so we waited for the first hour outside the checkin area. I read my book. We checked in, which was as smooth as ever. In the waiting area were overpriced food and gimmicks which weren’t particularly interesting, and pretty universal to every airport. I spaced out until our flight was called.
The plane was fine. I read some and did a bit of programming for the hour and a half. I tried to figure out how to change the xbtt program, and got a bit closer to what I want to do with it.
We got to beijing safely, and took taxis back to campus. There was basically no traffic since it was 11 pm.
I got in, and checked my email, and am now downloading and getting ready to post pictures. It won’t be too long before I go to bed.