Our last day in Beijing was busy. It began with a visit to a Hutong. This type of neighbor is traditional in Beijing. It was started by the Manchus in the Ching Dynasty and features single story courtyard houses. During the Cultural Revolution, most of these houses were divided and are currently occupied by several families. The home that we visited has been in the same family for many generations, but now consists of two rooms and a separate tiny kitchen. Members of the family carry on the tradition of painting snuff bottles, and we watched a demonstration of how it is done. We also had lunch at the house. It seems like the food we eat with families is always better than what we get in the restaurants.

After lunch we walked through the Hutong and visited a local market . Then we visited the Temple of Heaven built between 1406 and 1420 by the same Emperor who built the Forbidden City. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

After dinner we headed to the train station to board our sleeper train for Xi'an. There were no single accommodations on the train and I shared the compartment with a fellow traveller. The other two single women were not so lucky, they were both assigned to compartments with strangers. One actually had two upper berths in two separate compartments, but through negotiations our trip leader was able to make some swaps and the two ended up sharing a compartment with a young couple from Belarus. So, one of them had to use an upper berth.
The compartments were quite small and the beds were narrow, but I did manage to get a little sleep.