Our last day in Beijing

Sorry about the day delay in posting! We got back after touring yesterday and our internet was off-we had to pay for it in Beijing by the day and we decided that since we were leaving first thing in the am, not to have it turned back on.
We had another beautiful weather day in Beijing. The sun was hot though as we did a lot of walking. We started off going to tiananmen square and the forbidden city. A lot of history for China there. The forbidden city was so huge-it just kept going on and on. Tim loved it as he is the history lover of the family :-) After that we went on a rickshaw ride (a little cart pulled by a bike) through the streets of Hutong. Hutong litterally means small or narrow streets-they seemed more like allies. It was an eye opening experience for sure. People in this area live very different than what we are used to. We were so glad we got the opportunity to go. They took us to a family's home where they showed us around, invited us for tea and chatted with us. He told us that when we come back to China, we can come back to his house and do karaoke with them! He was so nice.
Later in the afternoon the four of us decided to venture out and take a cab to Silk Alley and Pearl Market. What a place-it was a hoot! It was like a 4 story mall, but inside was wall to wall booths of vendors selling everything you could imagine. Now think about when you go into a store in the US where the workers are on comission-well times that agressivness by 100! These ladies (just a few men selling) yelled at you, begged you, grabbed you all to get you to buy their stuff. Vicky and I were feelling pretty good about ourselves as we were called beautiful many times-LOL And Tim and Tom were everyones American friend! One lady looked at my hand and saw that I have more than one ring on (I only have 2 on each hand) and asked if I had more than one husband!! Tom was told that because he was American, he was rich-LOL One vendor grabbed Vicky and she had to move her out of her way to get by-they were quite aggressive! It was a riot though-we bargoned a couple of things. No matter what you wanted to buy, they always started the price at $100 USD-about 670 Yuan. We didn't pay over $150 Yuan for anyhing. We highly doubt the Puma, Northface etc goods were real-not bad knock-offs though. LOL LOL We even survived the cab ride!

That brings us to this am-we were up at 4:30am to catch our 8am flight to Nanjing. We had quite a bit of turbulence on the flight-I was glad it was short. We are in the Mandarin Garden hotel in Nanjing and we really like it. We took a walk around and there were a lot of shops around here. In an hour we are going to the bank and to Walmart-I can't wait to see Walmart china as I hear it is a lot different than in the US. Tomorrow is Gabe Day!!! It was kinda funny to walk into a hotel room with a crib in it-not sure if a 3.5 yr old in China will sleep in a crib or not??? I have his little backpack filled with a couple of toys and snacks for tomorrow! It is so unreal!! Will post when I can tomorrow!
Jordan and Jay-tomorrow you become Jie Jie and GeGe!

I have added more pictures to our flicker acct. also! http://www.flickr.com/photos/42439562@N06/