May 24th, 2007 - Arrival in Beijing

One year ago today, we landed in Beijing (you lose 12 hours on the trip). Here are K and EJ at the Beijing airport waiting for our luggage:

I took some photos out the bus window on the way to our hotel. Here was a restaurant right around the corner from the hotel:

Once we got checked in, our guide for the day Chen Chen asked at least one person from each family to meet her in the lobby so we could go to a local market to get more bottled water. I told K and EJ that I would go, but they should stay awake. I thought we would eat dinner at the hotel and then be in bed by 7 or 8 P.M., since none of us really slept on the flight. Instead, when I returned to the room at 6 P.M., this is what I found:

I figured if I couldn't beat them, I should join them, so I jumped into bed and crashed until about 8 P.M., when the very nice bellboy with bad timing rang our doorbell to see if everything was satisfactory. Of course it was...I WAS SLEEPING!!! We got up, went downstairs to get some takeout from the restaurant, and had a lot of fun trying to explain to a Chinese guy that EJ wanted spaghetti without the sauce. He must have repeated that order at least a dozen times with a question mark at the end. We kept saying "Just butter". Butter? Spaghetti, no sauce, and butter? Crazy Americans....that's what he thought. Then, we went back to bed around 10 P.M., slept until about 3 A.M., got up and reorganized luggage and packed the backpack for the day until about 5 A.M., and then snoozed for another hour before going to breakfast.