Our first day

Where to start, where to start? To say experiencing China with our day one itinerary is like jumping into the deep end of the pool doesn't do it justice. Wow, wow, wow! We are totally in China and loving it. Our day started with all of the usual morning routine stuff of getting ready before we hit the breakfast buffet. The hotel has as awesome array of food to cater to breakfasts of the world including cold cereal, made to order omelets, Asian selections, salmon, assorted breakfast meats, yogurt and more. We all loaded up on food and enjoyed seeing some of the other families from our agency. It looked like an adoption convention there were so many of us!

We loaded on the bus at 8:30 and rolled out. Our guide today is Sherry along with Lineaker and Mandy. Sherry gives us a brief history of Beijing while we rumble through the city on our way to Tianamen Square, the largest public square in the world. Traffic is horrid and you couldn't pay me enough to drive a bus here unless it was in a Road Warrior type of scenario where I could just plow my way through the traffic. :) We get our first glimpses of the Square as we are driving to a drop off spot and we see it is jammed with people. The Chinese people like to see Chairman Mao's body which is in a crystal coffin. The line literally is MILES long. Good news is that seeing Mao isn't on our agenda today. We come to appreciate why there are so many Chinese with umbrellas after walking for a bit - it is HOT - like over 100 hot today in Beijing. We walk past the monuments and across the Tianamen towards the Forbidden City and stop for a photo op where you can see the gate where Chairman Mao declared the People's Republic of China and where his portrait now hangs. While baking in the sun, one of the daughters of a family in our group succumbs to the heat and almost at the same time Max started saying his stomach hurt pretty bad. The other family takes a taxi back to the hotel and fortunately Max's affliction passes with some shade, water and a few burps. :).

We head towards the Forbidden City where we learn to appreciate just how many people are in China. The crush of people is unreal as we squeeze on to bridges leading into the complex. We are totally awed by the size and beauty of the City. Seeing this palace has been a dream for years and to be here us just surreal. The splendor of the Forbidden City is different from say a Palace of Versailles but equally tangible. The kids are rock stars here and we are literally stopped multiple time to have a group picture featuring us or just Veronica. As usual with
Veronica, they get mixed results; some get smiles and cuteness others, well let's say that dragons don't just live in China. LOL! We work our way through the city and take over 100 pictures. The large open spaces in the palace offer brief respites from the crowds only to be funneled back into a small gate or tunnel. We'll have to come back sometime when we can spend more time seeing inside the buildings and really enjoying the grounds.

We load back on the bus and it is off to our first Chinese lunch! Lunch was great and we tried a lot of different things. Sydney was awesome and ate just about anything and Max tried a few items, so that was good, too. They had a vegetarian entree so Julie was covered as well. The kids all enjoyed Coca Cola, something they don't get at home so it was a winner all around. Back on the bus to see a pearl store where we learned how freshwater pearls are cultured, graded, etc. I can appreciate how some would like to get something as an heirloom but we spent way too much time here for our liking. The next stop was the Summer Palace. Due to the heat we didn't get to explore it much so I guess we'll save that for the next trip. While at the Summer Palace we saw a fight between some vendors over one of them selling ice cream without a permit. Surprisingly there were not many police around and it went on a lot longer than I would have expected but I suspect the small teenager in the police uniform didn't want to get his butt kicked by these older people. It all ended ugly when a lady who was somehow associated to one of the vendors had her head cut pretty badly by some broken glass. Not a pretty scene at all and thankfully we left shortly thereafter.

We then stopped by a silk "museum" code for factory where we learned about silk and had the opportunity to buy some if we wanted. We stayed here longer than we would have liked, too.
Our next stop was a quick photo op of the Olympic stadium, the bird's nest, and the water cube. Finally we were off to dinner where we experienced Peking Duck and an assortment of a lot of other foods. We all struggled to stay awake on the short ride back to the hotel. We came back and even the allure of watching F1 qualifying on Eurosport couldn't overcome jet lag and heat.
Today (I am writing this in the morning) we get to see the Great Wall and finally, tomorrow we get to meet Emerson! Time to get ready for the day. Hope all is well back on that side of the world.