China - Day 1 - November 26, 2008

We decided to spend Thanksgiving 2008 in Beijing, China. The tours office offered a great 5-day package and off we were. We woke up on Wednesday morning at 4:30 am to get ready for our 4-hour flight. We had to catch a bus from the base at 6:00am to get to the Narita airport (a 2 to 2 1/2 hour drive) for our 10:30 a.m. departure. It was a relatively quick 4-hour flight to Beijing. From the air we had this gorgeous view of Mt. Fuji.

We were escorted by our Japanese tour guide Yuko and greeted in Beijing by our Chinese tour guide Cha Cha. It was very smooth getting through customs, everything was done as a group. As we made our way through the airport it was explained to us that due to the Olympics this terminal was all brand new as were a lot of the roads and renovations to the hotels. Everything was very Western looking. The Chinese even drove on the correct side of the vehicle and the road.

Traffic in Beijing was very heavy. They don't have the wonderful transit system they have here in Japan. So we had a little bit of a bus ride, but we did see some wonderful buildings.
Soon we arrived at the Joy City International Hotel. We were amazed at the wonderful 2-bedroom suite we had. It was so luxurious, definitely bigger than the Japanese hotel's we've heard about but yet to stay in. Our room was a 2-bedroom suite. Each with a king size bed and it's own dream bathroom with separate vanity. Each bedroom had it's own flat screen TV and reading area. The rooms were divided by a living room and kitchen with oven, stove, microwave, refrigerator and washer/dryer. Had we known we needn't have packed so much. And the view was absolutely gorgeous. The only drawback was the heat, was uncontrollable. The room was very hot and there was no airflow even with the windows open. What we would soon learn was China was very dry.....which led to Kyle's 13 bloody noses (yes he kept count, but he was a trooper!)

We arrived to the hotel about 4:00p.m. and had some free time until dinner which was provided by the tour at 6:00 p.m. We quickly unpacked and went to stretch our legs at the mall attached to our hotel. We went in search of the Starbucks in the mall to get collectable mugs of China...mission accomplished!

We were then on our way to dinner for our first Chinese meal, Peking Duck. Unfortuantely, on the way Kyle got a bloody nose, which lasted about 45 minutes due to the dry weather. So for the first 20 minutes of dinner we tried to stop it enough to put some cotton up his nose to enjoy the rest of dinner. He was a real trooper. Don and the kids really loved the duck, I didn't try it since I'm not much of a dark meat eater.

We had a wonderful first day and were looking forward to Day 2. We had a 6:30am wake up call, which we were up an hour before so we could board the bus at 8am. It would be a busy day - The Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, The Summer Palace, and the silk factory.