Yesterday, we had a free day to do whatever we wanted.  We thought we would have some breakfast and catch up with friends and family on Skype.  We managed to chat with Dave/Jenn/Denis and Amy and we also talked to BJ – he had my parents’ laptop.  Apparently the screen died after we talked to them on Thursday night.  We had a good laugh because we talked about them calling BJ if there were any issues with their computer while we were gone.  I look forward to chatting with them again soon.
Around twelve o’clock, we ventured out shopping for afternoon.  We were given a map of the area around the hotel with all the shopping malls and North American restaurants.  The map is great but once we were on the street it was very difficult to distinguish what were mall entrances and what weren’t.  So we mostly just walked along Wangfujing Street.  It was very crowded and had a familiar Toronto smell.  I did snap a few pictures along the way but not as many as I would have liked.  Perhaps on our trip back to Beijing, I will have an opportunity to get more.  Also as promised to my Mom, here is the Catholic Church just around the corner.






My big plans ended in disaster.  We were only gone one hour and I learned a very important lesson – You break it you bought it.  We are now the proud owners of a bell chime.  Enough said on that.
We ended up watching some TV in our room for the rest of the afternoon and just had dinner at the hotel again.  I am finding it very challenging for food options with my allergies and given the experience in the afternoon, I was not feeling very brave about going out again.

We are obviously still having some jetlag as we were both asleep at 830 last night.  I also woke up twice in the night – one part nerves and one part stressing about our luggage maximums for Sunday.