Travel Day

The day to leave for China finally came! The morning began at 3:30 a.m. on 4/30 and didn't end until 8:30 p.m. on 5/1, It was a long day!! The flights over were good. I am not a big fan of flying but had peace about the journey and survived the day. The 12 hour flight from San Francisco to Beijing was packed and uncomfortable. There were 380 passengers on that plane! They had lots of movies to keep us entertained so I got to watch a few movies I had been wanting to see, that helped.

We arrived in Beijing at 2:30 p.m. and that waited about an hour and a half to get through immigration, customs and baggage claim. Our lovely guide Ceceila met us at arrivals and along with another CCAI family we made the trek to our hotel, SunWorld Dynasty. Ceceila talked to us throughout the van ride about what we would be doing in Beijing, and interesting things about China. One of the interesting thiings we learned was that in China you must apply for a license plate and then wait for the government to accept your application before purchasing a car. One of her friends has been waiting for 2 years! They also have certain days of the month that limit when you can drive. If your license plate ends in 1 or 6 for example, you can not drive on Mondays. We were lucky to arrive on a Chinese holiday so traffic wasn't too bad getting to the hotel.

We arrived at the hotel, showered up and went to a noodle shop next door. The food was amazing! Some of our options were donkey meat, rabbit, duck (with the head still on), and carp. We chose to be boring and just go with chicken ;) After dinner we walked around town and found some street vendors. There were some interesting food choices available... 

Inside the noodle shop

we both made valiant attempts at chopsticks, eventually we gave up and used forks.

Spring rolls, fried grain rice (similair to couscous), and kung pau chicken - soooo good!;

Street vendors lined this street for at least a quarter mile. 

Squid on a stick, this seemed like a popular choice