Day Six

We awoke kinda late today at like 9 o'clock. We left the apartment & walked around to the main street of the area & found a small bakery to get breakfast. So we paid about 5 RMB for breakfast, so that's like 60 cents or so...pretty cheap. After we ate we went to the bus stop, where we waited for like 15 minutes until we realized that we waiting for the bus on the wrong side of the street (wrong direction), so we walked over the over-pass to the other side of the street. After waiting another 15 minutes, the bus arrived. We rode the bus until we got to Tian'amen (it took almost 2 hours with all the fucking traffic). Anyway, we walked to the square, wisited all the sites, looked at all the monuments until lunch, where we walked away from the square & found a small restaurant, where we had three delicious dishes (this is how you eat in China, not one per person, but however many and all share) & a couple beers, all costing 53 RMB (1 USD = 7.6 RMB). Awesome, we walked back to the square & walked to the Forbidden City & deliberated whether or not to buy the admission tickets (it was 60 RMB, and just eating all of that delicious food I was skeptical). Well, I decided that it would be silly as shit to come to China and not go to the Forbidden City, so I decided to buy the entrance ticket and I think I made Ruoya feel bad enough to buy a ticket too. I'm glad we did go in, it's only once in awhile that a poor farm boy like me can go there. Inside the forbidden city, were relics from the various dynasties & emperors, and, of course, the palace (winter). You can't really go into parts where the emperors lived. After that we took a cab to the Silk Street Pearl Market, which is a huge building of counterfeit goods, where I'm going to buy a lot of gifts & things for myself. After we left (Ruoya bought a pair of adidas for less than 20 & felt ripped off), we walked around outside & some guy approached us asking if we wanted to buy some 'DVD movies' & we did, so he took us to a nail salon, where he went to the back, and returned with suit case with a retarded amount of DVDs. I ended up buying 4 DVDs ($2.50 each). After we that we got some over-priced coffee, took the subway to meet his aunt at a restaurant. the subway is pretty shitty, similar to MARTA, but it's trying to be Tokyo's subway (but it is not, not by a lot). We rode it & when we got off, we took a taxi, to the restaurant in a four-block U-turn (haha) we had dinner, it was pretty good, but I liked lunch more. After dinner, Ruoya's aunt took us to her office at her hospital to use the internet. Now we're back at the apartment, watching Rocky II, which is awesome.