We're in China - Day 1 & 2

We arrived in Beijing late Friday night. The flight from Chicago was about 14 hours. It wasn't too bad except for all the sitting. My butt was getting numb! Rachel slept for a long time and missed dinner. They brought us food 3 times it was ok. I watched Downton Abbey then I fell asleep for a few hours. There was a nice guy named Luke sitting next to me he was going to Taiwan to study Chinese. We had a long layover in Chicago on Thursday- it was more boring than the flight to Beijing.

We arrived around 10:00pm and the Beijing airport was pretty empty. We had a long walk to get go through immigration, get our luggage and go thru customs.  It was all very easy. The international terminal is very big and nice. Then our guide Cai met us. It was like paparazzi with all the people waiting within signs.

Not far to the hotel Novotel Peace. Really nice hotel and nice room. We drove past Snack Street but it was closed. We were really hungry it was now midnight but felt like lunch time so we ordered soup from room service.  We did not get to sleep until around 3:00am due to the time difference. The beds and pillows were comfy not hard!

 

Saturday we went to the breakfast buffet in the morning at the hotel. So much food! And so many different things. We decided to go for a walk. We saw the Apple store and walked past snack street but it was closed. We walked all the way down to the Forbidden City but we didn't have time to tour. We had to walk back to the hotel to check out. It was really hot so we got banana Popsicles. There were vendors selling watermelon and cantaloupe on a stick.

Our guide Cai picked us up to go to the airport. This time the domestic terminal was not as nice. We found our flight was delayed 2 hours for some reason?. People kept trying to talk to me about Rachel but I couldn't understand them, The airport security people were very stern and not nice. We waited a while then took a bus to our plane. 

The flight to Guiyang was fine. The food was not so good. We got to the airport and our guide Vickie was waiting for us. She speaks really good English and told us all about Guizhou province. It is like NYC here. Lots of big buildings and lit up signs it looks like Times Square at night. The hotel is nice and we have a large room but only 1 king bed and a couch. No one speaks English at all except the hotel manager. We tried to ask for an extra blanket but no one can understand us! Also no room service. The beds at this Novotel are rock hard!

I will try to post some pictures later. The VPN is working much better here in Guiyang. We haven't needed any power adapters so far. We meet Anna tomorrow afternoon - Sunday.

*update - got a few pictures posted*