Back from Beijing: The end of the trip.

Well, after 36 hours of travel, I'm safely back at home in Lexington, Kentucky. In short, it really was an amazing trip. As I've been away from the internet for the past 60 hours or so, I'll try to sum up everything that's happened since the last time I posted Monday night, Beijing time.

Monday night was really our first excursion on our own to get true Chinese food. It turned out all right, though it became quickly apparent why we hadn't gone out to eat more often. Quite simply, Beijing waiters and waitresses really haven't mastered the English language (and we haven't exactly mastered Mandarin, either). In any case, we had our (second) taste of real Chinese food. This time, it was the Beijing specialty: Peking duck. Aside from having a duck's head cut in two pieces set on a plate in front of us (cooked, at least...but still very clearly a duck's head), it wasn't too bad.

Tuesday morning, our last day in Beijing, we managed to get tickets through the company who organized our Beijing trip, Roadtrips for the preliminary rounds of Athletics. Our assigned seats were in "Tier 4," which we figured was probably the section above the nosebleed section. We were in for a pleasant surprise when we walked into a luxury box. Not bad! I have to give Roadtrips credit: they built a fantastic package for us, so if you ever wanted to go to a major sporting events (the Olympics, the Super Bowl, World Cup, etc.), this is the organization to do it with.

We came back to our hotel in order to check out and met up with Elaine and two of her teammates (Matt Grevers and Nathan Adrian) to go visit the Summer Palace in Beijing. There is the Tower to Buddhist Incense (pictured) built on top of a huge hill which offers a fantastic view of Beijing (so long as it's a clear day). In addition, we saw the Marble Boat (pictured), constructed by the Empress Dowager Cixi in 1893 with funds earmarked for the Imperial Navy. And no, the Marble Boat most certainly does not float.

I've successfully uploaded two pictures on this blog post. I promise: this is the last blog post without significant numbers of pictures or links to an album of pictures. I've got lots more stuff coming, as I'll post pictures, other stuff we learned while in Beijing, and a little bit of perspective on what's happened thus far. I'm hoping to get another blog off later tonight, but that will depend on how much Olympics I watch and how late I can stay up (I've been up for about 26 hours, and began traveling from Beijing about 40 hours ago).