Back to Beijing

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We thought we would try to take the buses back to the airport so we went to the bus station around 8 in the morning and caught a bus to Guilin. This took longer than we thought about an hour and a half. Our flight left at 11 AM so we jumped out of the bus when it got to Guilin and caught a taxi to the airport. It took almost a half hour to get there from the bus stop. We had gotten in a taxi and it drove a little bit and then he pulled over behind another taxi and jumped out and started putting our bags in the other taxi's trunk. We were really confused. We got out and then into the other taxi. This was all really strange. Anyway we made it to the airport on time and were back in Beijing by 1PM. We took the train from the airport to the metro station in Beijing where we got on the metro and took it to the closest stop to our next hotel. We decided to stay at the Fish Inn instead of the Park Plaza Beijing because it was about a third of the cost. The Fish Inn was located in a hutong so we got off the metro and followed the directions I had printed out previously. We only made one wrong turn before we found it, not bad! The place was nice and the staff super helpful. The bed on the other hand was rock hard and the room was really tiny which I was expecting after reading all of the reviews. We checked in and went for a walk to Beihai Park. It was really pretty and at the end we saw the nine dragons wall which was pretty cool. More people wanted to take pictures of us with them so Dave went and stood by the wall with them so they could have a picture. It was sprinkling the whole time we were in the park. After exiting out the other end we walked around the other lakes looking for a restaurant Dave had seen online that he wanted to go to. We never did find it. We took a rickshaw to the other side of the lake where the majority of the restaurants were and picked one out to eat at. This was the popular place to be and the menu prices reflected it. The food was very good though. After dinner we walked to the next lake area which was full of bars, hundreds and hundreds of bars with someone trying to get you to go in each one. They were all empty and playing different loud music. One was even a country western bar. We finally just picked one and went to the roof seating so we could see all of the people on the street. We had a drink and then made our way back to our hotel.

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