Day 65 – March 21 – Beijing, China – returning to ship in the evening

The next morning they picked us up at the hotel and we went to the Temple of Heaven where we met a local man and wife who tried to teach Fred and I how to do Taiji  Ball.  This combines Taiji movements with a small racket and ball.  Our Guide got some good pictures of us and I'll try and post one later.  It was a lot of fun but more difficult that it looked.  They gave us the rackets, balls and a carrying case to take with us including a CD with instructions.

Then we visited the Temple of Heaven which I think is better than the Forbidden City as it is more completely restored. 

Lunch was at a very nice restaurant called Heaven and Earth near the Forbidden City.  Leo came to meet us and brought us a beautiful wall hanging.  He had pre-ordered for us and we had, bbq short ribs, an interesting salad of greens and walnuts, chicken with peanuts, onions in a chili sauce, steamed vegetables, including lotus root and some I did not know, rice, followed by dragon fruit for desert.  It was all very, very good.

Leo and I had exchanged several e-mails about whether to order ourselves or let him order...I was extremely reluctant to have pre-ordered meals, but we are glad I let Leo do it as they have been wonderful.

The drive back to the ship in Tianjin was uneventful until we got close to the port.  On Sunday, when the driver and guide had come to get us, there wasn’t much truck traffic and they had followed other buses and cars in.  On Monday afternoon the truck traffic was horrendous!  Trucks were lined up for miles in both directions around the new construction sites.  The driver took a wrong turn and we ended up almost to the city of Tianjin.  He turned around and found one of the gates to the port.  He asked a policeman where the cruise port was and started off in that direction.  We finally saw a sign that said Tianjin Home Cruise Port and with only a few more wrong turns made it to the ship.   We were not worried as we arrived in the port area around 3:00pm and the ship didn’t sail until 7:00pm.  We had a lot of fun in the car during all of this driving around teasing our driver about being lost.  He was a very good driver and this port is so new that a lot of the drivers were having trouble getting around.