We were scheduled to fly back to Guangzhou on a 4:50 flight out of Tianjin.  Tianjin is a city approximately 70 miles southeast of Beijing.  We were going to take a bullet train from Beijing to Tianjin, then a taxi from the train station to the airport.  This would not only be the most cost effective method, but also the most time efficient method.  The entire trip from our hotel to the Tianjin airport was supposed to take us less than 1½ hour, so on a normal day we would not need to leave Beijing until 2:30.  However we had been advised by numerous people that travel around Beijing would be hell that day, as they were rehearsing for China’s 60^th National Day.  National Day is the anniversary of China becoming the People’s Republic of China and is celebrated on October 1^st.  Therefore, we asked for a late checkout at 1:00 PM, giving us an additional 1 ½ hour to get to Tianjin. 

We still had a whole morning left, so we decided to go to the Temple of Heaven.  The Temple of Heaven was the complex that the emperor of China visited to pray for good harvest every year.  This is another ancient ground that is now widely used as a park.  There were people playing shuttlecock, badminton and Chinese chess, ballroom dancing and practicing tai chi, along with the tourists visiting the historic landmarks.  We spent a while walking around the complex, but once again found it so crowded that we could not get good pictures of most of the buildings.  The one thing that we did find at the Temple of Heaven that I did not find anywhere else was a souvenir shop that actually sold t-shirts. 

Upon leaving the Temple of Heaven, we were greeted by the traffic snarl, we were promised.  After days of finding a taxi in seconds, it took us a long time to hail a taxi.  We got back to the hotel, but could not use the elevator, as our keycards had expired.  The front desk clerk reinstated our cards and we went upstairs and collected our luggage and went back down to checkout.  We asked the front desk clerk about mailing postcards, as we had not seen a single post office the past couple of days.  She nicely offered to take our postcards to the post office tomorrow the next day, as she did not have to work.  We gave her $20 which was more than enough to cover the cost of mailing the cards, but she insisted on giving us change, after we told her how much it would be to mail each of the cards.  Again, tipping is completely discouraged. 

We went outside and tried to flag down a taxi and after 15 minutes, we were still unable to flag one down.  So, we walked to the main road and as we were approaching the end of the street, a taxi pulled up in front of us and the passengers got out and we got in.  The seven mile taxi ride turned out to the ride from hell, we were stuck in traffic for close to 30 minutes.  We got to the train station to find that the next train was leaving in 10 minutes, knowing that there was no way we were going to make that with the two kids in tow, we opted to wait for the next train, which was leaving in 40 minutes. 

We then went to the KFC and McDonalds in the train station and bought lunch for us and the kids.  Quickly ate our lunch and went to the train platform.  All luggage was placed by the back of the train car in an open area and all passengers were assigned seats.  The train ride was to take exactly 30 minutes and the train was expected to get up to 330km per hour (205mph).  The train ride was quick and efficient; the scenery went by with the blink of the eye.  I had never gone quite that fast on land before and the traffic geek in me was ultra excited with the ride on the train.  We did get up to at least 324kph; there was a nifty screen that showed the speed of train. 

Once we got off the train, we were greeted by a bunch of people offering rides to the airport for a set amount of money.  We quickly struck up a deal and were off to the airport.  The ride to the airport took us about 20 minutes, which was quicker than expected.  We got to the airport just in time to check in for our flight and sit for 15 minutes before we were to board the plane.  This was a nice change from the last plane ride where we were stuck at the airport for hours.

The flight was fine until the end; we were again given meals of rice with chicken or beef with noodles.  The gentleman next to me was rather large, he requested and was given two meals.  We arrived in the Guangzhou area on time, but had to fly around a while before we were allowed to land.  By the time we landed, it was close to 9:00.  We collected our luggage and went to meet Auntie and Wah.  They then took us to the usually noodle restaurant for a quick dinner and it was back to the same hotel we stayed at previously in Guangzhou.

Again, the check in process was simple, with the passports of all adults, the required deposit and we were given room 3223.  This room was slightly smaller than the last room, but was fine, as we were only staying one night.  The bathroom was clean and the bathmat was not moldy this time.  The kids and adults fell asleep quickly after a long week of walking and sightseeing.