Saturday, June 15, 2003
Today was a jam packed day! After a red-eye flight from LA, we arrived in Beijing at 5:00 am. At first, we didn't see our guide and started rambling to try to figure out the pay phones here. Robbie took a 3rd sweep of the sign holders and finally found our last name hand-written on a sign. (We were supposed to be looking for our agency logo on a printed sign with our name.) Once we found her, she took us on a tour of the parking garage where we loaded our bags and headed for the hotel. We were super thrilled to hear that we did not miss any sight seeing yesterday as a result of our crazy canceled flights! We got to the hotel at 7:00, took quick showers, ate a quick breakfast, and then met up with another family from AWAA to go the Forbidden City. China is rich in ancient history and touring this ancient stronghold gave us a good look into our daughter's ancient culture.
After The Forbidden City, we made a quick run back to the hotel before heading out to lunch. As you can imagine, the girls didn't eat much of anything from this authentic Chinese restaurant (that really tried to prepare Western Chinese food for us!). I tried a few things, but it wasn't a cuisine that I would ask for more of!
Next was the Great Wall of China visit! We toured an area that was super steep and almost made it all the way to the top before we decided we had really seen enough! It was amazing to see how intact the wall was after so many years, and sad to realize how many people died while building it for a reason that failed. So much history that I really am anxious to learn more about!
We also found out that we leave at 7:00 in the morning to catch a 9:00 flight to Gansu. And, we will be meeting our daughter tomorrow!! Since we've been up for what feels like days - we left Thursday and its Saturday night with no sleep! - we opted out of dinner and decided to stay in to repack and rest up for our big GOTCHA DAY tomorrow, Father's Day!!
**first three pics are from the forbidden city.
little girl is the daughter of the couple who are traveling with us
Next pics are from The Great Wall
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