Day 286 – Kerri Wu, BeiHai Park, Good-bye Evan

David, Evan and I met at the hotel at 6 a.m. and had them give us a ride to the train station.  We took the high speed train to Beijing and arrived about 9:30.  We really like the high speed trains and wish we had them in the US. 

This was our speed on the train.  It translates to about 188 mph.  Smooth ride, my ears don't have problems, comfortable seats, you can easily get up and move around when you want to and there USUALLY isn't a long wait time.

Evan knew how to get around on the subway in Beijing so that we could find his hotel and store his bag there until he could check in later.  It was a little hard to find the hotel.  We stopped three different people and all they could do, except the last one, was point that it was further down the road.  Evan booked this hotel because it was supposed to be close to the airport express subway.  It turned out to be a fair distance, but still within walking distance of the hotel. 

When we finally got to the hotel, they went ahead and checked Evan in so he was able to take his bag up to his room.  Then we found our way back to the subway so that we could meet Kerri Wu.  Kerri is a friend of our friend, Bob Anderson (they used to work together at Motorola), and when Bob found out we were coming to China, put us in touch with Kerri.  She had been a great help to Evan after the BYU group left Beijing, so that he could come be with us.

Kerri met us in the subway station after we got off at the BeiHai Park stop.  The BeiHai Park is a mix of traditional classic Chinese garden and modern western garden.  It was built around 600 A.D. and has been named as an important historical site.  There is a large tower that we did not climb to in the center of the garden and also a lake that a lot of people were out enjoying. 

 

This was a traditional Chinese instrument orchestra that we listened to.  We really enjoyed the music.

People out enjoying the lake in BeiHai Park.  The petal boats would have been fun.

David, Evan and I at the lake.

This is our new friend, Kerri Wu.  We really enjoyed our day with her!

By the time we walked to the south end of the park, we were ready for lunch.  Kerri knew of a great place to have Beijing Duck, so we took a taxi there to save our feet.  Lunch was good and the Beijing Duck at this restaurant rivaled the great one we had here in the hotel attached to Shandong University.  We sat and talked for a long time getting to know Kerri and enjoying being with her. 

We took the subway back to the train station and Kerri helped us exchange our later tickets for some earlier ones.  Then we found some seats in the station and visited some more.  When it was time to line up for the train, we hugged both Evan and Kerri.  It has been great having Evan here and show him all the things that we love about China and especially Jinan. 

After we lined up for the train, we found out that the train had been delayed for over a half hour.   We had to stand in line all that time until they were ready to let us load.  Our poor feet!  We finally loaded and then had a quiet ride back to Jinan.  We took a bus back to our place and reflected on a wonderful day.