Day 1

We had a VERY busy day 1.  Our guide decided we had 4 days to do 2 days worth of activities so she wanted to add some things. So we have squished our 4 days into 2 days and we are adding a trip to the "country" on sunday.

The breakfast at the hotel is mostly western style and good!  We visited Temple of Heaven, Forbidden City, Tianamen Square, a Hutong village and the Peking Acrobats show.  Everything is beautiful.  The weather is near perfect.  Most of the attractions center around Emperors, where they lived, vacationed and prayed.  We are finding the grounds at the tourist spots are not maintained as well as american or european tourist spots.  There are large crowds but we are getting around pretty well.  We also toured a Porcelin factory and watched the artist do some painting.  We bought one of her pieces.  We also went to tea at a tea house and had great teas.  They were very expensive so we couldn't buy everything we liked but got a little bit.  Hutongs are very old and very sad in some ways.  The people live in very small quarters.  We had lunch at a family's residence hired by our travel company.  It was 3 rooms, probably not heated, and very bare.  They use public restrooms and showers.  The food was awesome and the people were nice.  Just living on bare bones.  Some of the streets in the Hutong were very bad, filthy, but there were some neat shops and everyone was nice.  We took a Rickshaw tour there.

Many Nationals stop and look at us, especially the girls.  No one is rude about it, but they make comments to eachother.  We do stick out pretty well.  I presumed we would see more families that look like ours but not one yet.  

The girls are getting along well.  Ann and Tom Bott,  Joyce's parents, are real troopers.  they keep saying this is our vacation and they are just tagging along.  They love the girls and that has been good to have them.