We have made it to Beijing!  Wonderful flights, arrived in a full hour early, which had us checked in to our hotel and eating from the yummy breakfast buffet before 7am.





Our first day was a free day..left to explore and try to stay awake until a reasonable bedtime hour.  We filled it with shopping. (How can you not love grocery shopping in China...every part of a pig you could want...snout, ears, feet, tail..yummy.)


(Smoked & Spiced Duck Tongues-So why does that duck look so happy?)

Next, we HAD to get foot massages.  Meila made us do it!  She has been asking me non-stop for the last two days to get massages on the FIRST day we are in China.  We started out slowly with only a 70 minute massage and it was wonderful. Anya was very worried that it would tickle and that she wouldn't like it but she really enjoyed it too.



All that walking,shopping and massaging left us hungry so we found an interesting hot-pot restaurant and did our best to make wise choices off the Chinese menu.  We thought we were doing okay, but the laughing and head shaking of the staff had us second guessing what we would end up with.  We need not have worried as it turned out fine and we all seemed to enjoy our meal.





The only down side to the hot-pot restaurant was that it was HOT in there and Meila and Anya were feeling the heat and fading fast..But we still had several hours to stay awake. The answer was the hotel pool!




There were lots of funny rules posted at that pool..like no underwater swimming..hummm, is there another kind of swimming you can do in a pool?

Meila was our first sleeper of the night at 6:30.  The rest of us are hoping to make it till at least 8pm.  Getting ready for a full day of touring tomorrow