After the stress of the day before, all we wanted for day six was a little bit of relaxation before we flew home at 4:00 that afternoon. To accomplish this, we slept in until 9:30 (that was amazing for us, because we had been waking up around 5:30 every morning for the past five days), and then headed to an old shopping district.
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| The entrance to the shopping district |
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| Not sure what this guy was doing, but it looked like he was poking this man's ear with a needle. I respectfully declined to participate. |
The crowning jewel of the entire day was the discovery of a random restaurant, on a random side street, that happened to have the best beer selection I have ever seen in China. The Pint Beer Villa was like a sweet breath of fresh air. I chose a delicious Delirium Noel and sat with my two friends, just talking and enjoying the weather. It was a fitting ending to this amazing trip.
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| The Karl Marx statue was an interesting choice... |
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| Sweet, sweet nectar of the gods. |
From the shopping district, we headed to the airport. The only noteworthy point of that ride was when my friend left his phone in the taxi, the driver of which, thankfully, was a real upstanding fellow, and drove back to the airport to give it to him. He even tried to refuse a tip for doing it. As we waited at the gate, we met a young boy from western China and his father. The boy was the most outgoing kid I've ever met, and only served to make me miss my own nephew even more.
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| Even funnier than him, was the number of travelers that simply weren't interested in him at all, and just stared at their phone till he left them alone. Their loss. |
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| Playing with him was like the cherry on top of this amazing trip. |
Looking back, I can't say that I enjoyed every moment of this experience. That's hardly a measure of success, however. In my mind it was more about being memorable, than being enjoyable. This is not to say that I did not enjoy myself immensely, or that it wasn't an amazing experience. But, no doubt, over time, my memory of the pandas will fade, and the places I visited in Jiuzhaigou will blur into one beautiful image. The hard parts, be it the bus rides, the bad food, or the cold hotel rooms, won't be going anywhere. I take a little bit of comfort in that, because, in the end, it wasn't the beautiful views or the good food that brought me together with these people, it was the terrible bus rides, and the awful food. Those are the things we will laugh about long after the pandas are forgotten.
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