Day 1: Beijing Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven

First of all, we had a wonderful night's sleep. Several people have said how hard the beds are, but for us that made for a great sleep, and did wonders for our aching backs from the 16.5 hour plane ride. It's hard to get used to not using the water, we are just so spoiled and are used to having everything at our disposal. The hotel is nice and we knew we were going to have 2 separate rooms. The rooms have just one room in between, so the girls are sleeping in one room, and Craig and I in one room. It seems very safe, plus we make the girls bolt themselves in, etc. We had a great day touring Beijing, and I bet we have walked at the very least 5 miles. We took hundreds of pictures but Laura downloaded them to her computer and accidentally deleted them from her memory card before I had a chance to download them to my computer. I had her email a few to me, and when we find a flash drive we will transfer more to my computer! We toured Tiananmen Square, The Forbidden City, and The Temple of Heaven.

First we set off to Tiananmen Square. We learned so much History today and it was so interesting! Our guide was fantastic and she told us all about everywhere we went. We learned about the different Dynasties, and about the old and new Chinese beliefs, and political systems.

This was a beautiful live floral arrangement at Tiananmen Square that was there in honor of The National Holiday that is celebrated each October. We came at a beautiful time, because normally there wouldn't be all the fresh flowers.

More flowers at Tiananmen Square.

This is the stairway leading up to The Temple of Heaven.

We toured with April and Brett Furber today(the couple I told you about from Buford, GA)  and had a fantastic time. It was really so much fun to have someone else to go on these tours with us. I will say, that with our group of six, we managed to turn quite a few heads!! We saw very few Americans! The Chinese people would point and stare at us, and even ask to take their pictures with us! When we were at The Temple of Heaven this man came up to Craig and shook his hand and asked to have us stand with them in their pictures. They were very funny, but very appreciative to us for doing that. Our guide said that when most people pointed at us they were saying "Look at those big nosed foreigners!"  I found out that's what they call us! She also said that people here in Beijing are used to seeing Americans, but it was the people from the "countrysides" who were also touring that do not normally see Foreigners. Funny how there is so much "diversity" in the United States, but not in other countries. I had never thought about that before. Our guide left us at the end of our touring and suggested a couple places to go for dinner. Craig in the meantime ran into someone (an English speaking person) who does business here in Beijing quite often, and they said that those places would be horrible and he suggested somewhere else to go. We ventured out, and even managed not to get hit by any vehicle, bikes, or motorized carts! When we got to the restaurant they said it would be a 40 minute wait, so since we hadn't eaten since breakfast we decided to head back to the hotel restaurant. It was great for breakfast, so the girls and I decided to get some noodle dish with shrimp, and squid. Craig, April and Brett got spaghetti of all things. Well lets just say that they ate their spaghetti, and Craig ended up taking Laura and Christine to McDonalds, and I ate the shrimp off the three noodle dishes. So really we ended up paying around $80 or so for a plate of spaghetti, 3 bottled waters and 1 can of Coke!!! Well, we learned our lesson: Never get 3 of the same thing unless you are certain you know what it is and LIKE it!! I guess that's all for today! It took April and I awhile to get our VPN hooked up on our MACS. We had to change our server ID, but we finally did it, so we are good to email, facebook and blog! Life is Good!!