Bubblicious!

Today was bubblicious. Pure, crisp, zingy bubbly. Decent 5AM wake up. Work out. International buffet breakfast. Clean up. Meet Victor our driver at noon but first watch bubble acrobats in the lobby. Please note the mop in foreground.... Probably one of the most secure jobs in all of Beijing.... Black marble floor, Beijing sand and dirt. Front entrance 5 star hotel. Need I say more? Today we set out in Victor's snazzy Hundai and hit Beijing, or at least intended too. We had him for a full 5 hours and I was CERTAIN we'd get through a long list of must visit shops. Stop #1? The pearl market. Great! First thing I noticed was that I was locked into my iPhone reading the guidebook for much of the ride, that is until I sampled one of the supercharger, espresso ritz cracker snacks he supplied for us, and that all too familiar (hint think Singapore taxi) scent of "my car smells better than your car" wafted through my olfactory zone and crossed the barrier into stomach unrest. Right. iPhone down, eyes up, windows open! let the power be with you Victor. Its your itinerary from here on in....

And hit the pearl market we did, downstairs electronics, next floor bags-- brief stop at a booth with some wonderful "Lonchamp" bags-- the type I 've been teasing myself with at duty free- but boy oh boy did she start the INTIMIDATION sale with me and fast. Spelling error intended back there btw. Meanwhile, my shopping pals and Victor are in negotiations to have a look at some special stock. More about that later. Much later. So we proceed onwards, and head upstairs to two floors of pearls and jewelery. A sellers paradise given the prey... wayward, jet lagged, unsuspecting business travelers and tourists. Oh yes, today I got my bargain on and it wasn't until that espresso ritz cracker doo dad worked its magic that out came an angel and a devil.... Totally bubblicious! Boy were those pearls mind numbing and wow did I get ripped off. You see my fundamental error was to undercut their first offer by 50%. You must begin bargaining at least 80% under asking price and definitely Don't be afraid to walk. So on average I wound up about 20% over my internal no cross line. But those defenses were down.... and the circumstances and environment sort of took its toll. As after the pearl and jewelry stint-- wait tho--did you know that Madeline Albright, Laura Bush, Hillary Clinton and Margaret Thatcher all bought pearls at the store we visited? Oh they are so very pretty...... Anyway, more about the story that can't be told when i can tell it. The moral of the story is, never ask once, never ask twice, always ask at least three times and don't have any idea what you are asking for because you didn't know it exists. Did we hit the motherload? Suffice to say that we finally departed the Pearl Market neighborhood 45 minutes before we were due back, after spending that time in quite certainly odd circumstances. Where to next? Crazily overpriced tailor to reproduce my favorite silk blouse. Yikes, is this turning out to be a shopping blog or what? No, one poignant moment slid across my bow- as we drove through Tianamen square. I didn't see it, but I felt it and new immediately that this was where I had been. Even the square is completely unrecognizable, but not the feeling I'd had when standing in it 20 years ago. Then it was onto the hotel to meet the team and head out for dinner....

Taxi driver home serenaded us with orchestral whistling.... I'm marching off to sleeep I hope (melatonin and sleeping pills to follow) with Mozart symphonies coursing through my mind... tomorrow day 1.