We left Fuzhou today. The Fuzhou "International" Airport wasn't very busy. It seemed we'd breeze through. However, we encountered a delay with the airlines, because we had adult tickets for the kids, but they NEEDED children's tickets. They wouldn't take the adult tickets, even tho' they'd get more money for them. We would get a refund for the adult tickets, but we had to get them from the agency we bought them from. The plane held up for us for a few minutes. Silly rules that we'd never heard of from any other airlines. Sheesh.
We landed in Guangzhou 75 minutes later. A few taxi drivers tried to bargain a fare to take us home, but L. would hear none of it and we ended up taking the Airport Express (bus), to the nearest stop which was still a bit away from us. J., R., and I piled all the luggage into a taxi while the rest took the local bus. Unfortunately, our taxi driver missed a turn towards XM. We got hopelessly lost. The driver annoyingly started guessing where I wanted him to take us, taking us to different schools. I did not hide my disgust with him, which I'm sure made him nervous. We finally happened upon XM by chance. I paid him rmb 30, even though the meter read "47", which he sheepishly took (it was probably more than what we should've paid, but my irritation had subsided and he did wait for us with the luggage to be loaded).
When we all got home, L. found out that the family could stay at the empty flat next to us, so we decided to do that. It was much easier to have everyone at the same location, although there was a good bit of cleaning to do next door.
In the evening, we took them to our favorite Brazilian restaurant....it was loads of fun with a live band and a couple dancing latina style. It's nice to be home, for us, finally unpack, do some laundry etc., but what a week this has been...
