Toronto and Beijing

The flight to Toronto left on time. The plane was tiny ... only two rows of two seats with an isle about a foot wide. But it wasn't very long, so that was good.

The Toronto airport is small, but very clean and expensive. We spent some time playing cards, I started corcheting some slippers for Cassie, and just hanging out.

I suppose we left a bit early for Beijing. The plane was amazing for that flight, and thankfully, since it was the longest plane ride known to humankind. The plane had three seats, a wide isle, three more seats, another isle, and then three seats. I got stuck in the middle of one of the seat sets on the side. Sleep was hard to come by, but there were individual TVs on the back of every seat, and they had movies on demand, so I watched a few movies.

After we got to Beijing, we got into a huge bus and toured the city a bit. We drove by the Olympic venue. It's a big bunch of tangled steel. I don't really see much glamor in it ... and I do have pictures.

May I say here that American Chinese food is completely different from real Chinese food, and real Chinese food is way better. I sampled a bit of many different meats and veggies and liked almost all of them.

There was dancing from a local group while we ate. Afterwords, we came to the hotel and settled into our rooms. Several others and I went out to try to find this park we had been told about, but we couldn't find it ... so we found a restaurant. We had trouble communicating and ended up with a private room and six bottles of beer. I drank about a half of one and it was actually really good.

The cross walks are crazy. The roads are huge and cars have the right of way. Red lights are not laws, they are mere suggestions. Anyhow, we survived and are now in our semi-comfortable beds about to go to sleep.

The Great Wall tour is tomorrow and we may go to a spa/sauna tomorrow afterwords. It's so cheap! About $25 will get you in all day, meals (all you can eat), full body massage, etc. I hope we do - it'd be awesome.


Happy Mothers' Day, Moms!

Cait