Day Two in Beijing

Still feeling a bit jet lagged, I somehow managed to drag Jerry's butt all over Beijing.  We ended up at two parks (Jing Shan and Beihai) seeing a massive amount of temples, towers, lakes, and palaces, and walking that many more miles.  Sunday is a day that many of the locals use the park for singing, dancing, and meditation.  We also lucked up and found a pretty good restaurant with pictures on the menu.... always a bonus.  The food was good and the price was even better. We also saw plenty of Chinese tourist, some who asked Jerry and I to be IN there family photos.  I think we became more of the attraction than the temples.  For the first time, I was able to see first hand how the locals use the restroom.  I thank my lovely tennis team mate, Vicki, for giving me the heads up on the bathroom and toilet paper.  I will spare everyone a photo of the toilets.  The downside of the day was the air pollution and the fact that we could not find a legitimate taxi ride back to the hotel.  As a Westerner, we were immediate targets for every scam on the street.
We ended the day with a planned group dinner with all those who had arrived in Beijing.  This was our first but not last encounter with the Lazy Susan.  The food was OK.  More of the sweet Cantonese and less of the spicy Szechuan that I like.  The restaurant was covered in gold.  Very Bling, Bling!  The saving grace was that it was close to our hotel so a short walk back to finally rest for the day:-)

Day Two Slideshow

China World Hotel.... Shangri-La

No I did not take this picture... 

No, I did not take this picture, but wanted to give everyone an idea of where in Beijing we stayed.  This is the CBD (Central Business District) area of Beijing.  I would call in the Wall Street of Beijing.  The shorter middle building is our hotel, China World Hotel.  The tall building behind it is the China World Trade Center and the crazy building to the right is the CCTV Building.  This is China's major television network.
Under China World Hotel was an amazing mall with stores like Louis Vuitton, Cartier, and Dolce & Gabbana guiding us back to our room.  The hotel also had an indoor tennis court, pool, ping pong, ice skating rink, and access to the subway.  No need to even venture outside (although we did).  We ate on the 80th floor of the World Trade Center.  It was a lot like the Sun Dial in Atlanta.  Food OK and if it wasn't for the smog the view would have been amazing.

Day One



Layover in Seattle

 And so our journey begins.  A large group of us made to journey over together.  A stop in Seattle started the trip out well with several bottles of local wine.  We were now ready for our 12 hour flight to Beijing.  The Seattle from Beijing flight was pretty empty so we were all able to stretch out.  The flight took us over Alaska and Russia and we finally made it to Beijing late Saturday night.

PICASA SLIDESHOW

Here we go!

Looking pretty rough...Our Midnight Arrival in Beijing

I thought I would have access to Blogger while in China, but no such luck.  Google is slow to work over there and there is very limited access to blogs and no access to sites like Picasa and Facebook.  I am finally home and will get some pictures up on Facebook and Picasa.  I am going to put some thoughts down on Blogger, but it may take awhile as I am still jet lagged and Jerry is still in China.