Ni hao Beijing

Sept 10th --We arrived in Beijing at 9:20 a.m local time. (We are 13 hours ahead of CDT) The flight went well. The kids slept the entire way. Mike and I didn't sleep but more like rested, and enjoyed several movies on the plane. So that always helps. Once arriving in Beijing, it took us about an hour to get through all the necessary stops: medical release where they took our temperature, passport/visa check, luggage and then customs. Luckily, we had arranged a car service through our apartment, so when we exited the driver was waiting for us. After picking up a couple of drinks, we were in the car and on our way to the apartment. We arrived at the apartment about 11:00 a.m. The apartment complex is run more like a hotel so it has a reception desk where we checked in. We then went up to the 10th floor to our apartment. It is very nice with 2 bedrooms, bath and kitchen area. After getting settled in, everyone was tired and hungry. So we went downstairs where we decided to just eat in the restaurant inside the complex. It was good and quick. I thought I was literally going to fall into my salad at lunch. We came back upstairs and I quickly climbed in bed. Mike had decided that he wasn't that tired so he was going to power through the day. He was going to head out and go to the grocery store. Before leaving, I asked him to put on a movie for the kids. Well, I was sound asleep before the movie was even on. I had no idea when Mike left or came back. At one point, Abby woke me up because the volume wasn't working and I noticed that Austin had fallen asleep right beside me. I had sat the alarm for 4:00 so when it went off, I got myself up. Mike was back from his adventure out. I went looking for food and all he had brought back was bread, bottled water and one coke. This is where his story gets funny, of his first outing in Beijing... (this is Mike talking now). I headed out to find a grocery store. I had asked directions from the front desk, but they didn't provide much help. The street names were written in Chinese with poor handwriting. So I just started walking thinking I was bound to find one. I walked for about 20 minutes, crossing many roads which was a challenge in itself. There is no "pedestrian right of way"...its like a crazy game of Frogger. After getting far enough away from the apartment, I finally decided to turn around and regroup. I found a restaurant near the complex that had a nice outdoor seating area with trees for shade. I sat down and ordered a hot tea. As I sat there drinking my tea, I fell asleep. Luckily, I woke up when my head hit my chest. Not sure I wanted to fall asleep in the city by myself. I decided I was more tired than I thought so I better get up and walk around some more. I circled the block and found a very small grocery store (like the size of a 7-11). Unfortunately, nothing was in English and so I ended up with water, a coke and bread as I was too tired to figure anything else out. (Back to Amy) After hearing about his adventure out, we had to work really hard at getting Austin to wake up. Once he finally did, we all headed out the door to the Lufthansa Center, a large shopping mall, which was about a 20 minute walk. This was the kids and my first experience of the Beijing roads. We quickly learned that cars go every which way and do not stop for pedestrians. We safely made it to the Lufthansa Center where there was a grocery store at the bottom floor. We navigated our way successful through the aisles finding all kinds of groceries in English and even many American items. After paying our bill, we spent the majority of the walk back to the apartment trying to figure out how it was so expensive; especially since we were only carrying 3 bags. When we got back to the apartment, we looked over the receipt and figured out that we must have been paying extra for everything to be in English (that and Amy bought a can of almonds that was like $18 :-()...reminder to always look at the price). By this time it was dinner time, so everyone ate, took baths and headed for bed early. With all of that said about our first day, being here really isn't as much of a culture shock as we expected. We were expecting it to be a lot worse, but for the most part everything is in Chinese and English. Now, with that said, had we gone from the States to here first, it would have been a total culture shock!

Sept 11th -- Today was about trying to get over jet lag and begin to acclimate to our surroundings. We didn't get out of bed until about 9:30 this morning. We all woke up at various times last night as we try to adjust to the time change. Once we did get up, we were pretty slow moving. We finally left the apartment around lunch time with the intentions of going to find something to eat. Our apartment is located in a business district, so there are numerous "fast food" Chinese restaurants around. We found one that was named "Hollywood" in English. While no one in the restaurant spoke English, they had a nice picture menu that allowed us to point and order. It was actually pretty good for fast food, but I guess it's pretty hard to mess up noodles and rice. After lunch, we headed back to the apartment to ask some directions and help on a couple of various issues. One of the items we wanted to work out today was getting a metro/bus pass. They indicated that they were sold at the metro stop nearby. Since it's about a 15 minute walk, I decided to head out on my own while Amy stayed with the kids. We also asked about a playground / park for the kids. The lady pointed out the side door to the apartment complex. We weren't sure she understood what were were asking for, but were shocked when we walked out the door and find a huge playground. Turns out, there is a bilingual pre-school that shares the courtyard and they use the playground for recess. What a great find! So Amy stayed with the kids playing while I journeyed to the metro stop to buy our passes. I found the metro station with no problem and approached the ticket booth. Unfortunately the lady at the booth spoke no English and I had not brought any of our guidebooks with the Chinese translations. I tried various hand signals but to no avail. I finally gave up and went over to the automated ticket machine. It had an English option, but unfortunately, no option to buy weekly passes, only single tickets. So, I headed back to the playground to meet up with Amy and the kiddos. When I got back, the school children were out for recess and of course Abby and Austin had found friends to play with. After many hours of burning off a little bit of energy, we went back upstairs to the apartment for dinner and catching up on the blog/pictures.

Happy Birthday Abby!

Sept 9th --You would have thought it was Christmas morning for the new 6 year old. She got up early even after going to be late. She was so cute though and so excited to be 6 years old. Turning 6 seems to be bigger than turning 5...I guess that means a little more excitement will be added with each year. :-) We all got up to watch Abby open her gifts and then ate donuts for breakfast. We gave Abby a Queen's crown charm (for her charm bracelet), a new pair of jeans (she's blown a hole in the knee of her other one) and a vinyl Harrod's bag (she loves any kind of bag). She also got the movie "Hotel for Dogs" and six 1 dollar bills from "G" and Pops. She was thrilled with what she had gotten. Before leaving for the park though, we got some great news that our computer was repaired and ready to be picked up. We were shocked but so happy! We spent several hours at the park this morning trying to allow the kids to burn off some energy before our long flight. When we got done at the park, Mike headed to go pick up the computer and I took the kids back to the apartment. We ordered pizza for lunch and then Abby blew out her candles on her cupcake. The kids then enjoyed their cupcakes. By the time we finished up lunch, it was time to do some final packing and head to the airport. We left the apartment a little after 2:00 and luckily it didn't take us that long to get to Heathrow Airport. Our check in process was easy and so was turning in our VAT forms. We were then off to our gate where we boarded our plane. Our plane departed London at 4:40 p.m. The kids ate dinner, watched a movie and went to sleep...

Kids Fun

Sept 8th --Today was all about celebrating our two beautiful kids and especially Abby's 6th birthday. (We had to do most of the celebrating today instead of tomorrow because we are leaving for China tomorrow afternoon) So, the day started out with some 6 year old pictures with a beautiful London bridge in the background and then off to Hamely's toy store. Hamley's is London's biggest toy store with 5 floors of toys. Yes, 5 floors! It was a little crazy because both kids were so overstimulated they couldn't stop running around. Austin was on the train floor and Abby was on the girly girl floor. The main reason for going to Hamley's was so Abby could spend some birthday money she had received from MeMom. There were so many choices for her that we had to take a break, eat lunch and then go back at the shopping. Her biggest problem was that we had to limit her to something small enough to fit in her backpack. She finally decided on a beach Polly Pocket set. It was a perfect choice for her. After her purchase was made, we had to quickly make our way to Kensington Gardens where the Peter Pan tent was set up. We arrived there about 1:40 for the 2:00 show. For those that have been to a traveling Cirque show, the tent was set up very similar to those. The Peter Pan show was based off of Jim Barrie's book. It was a very good show, but a little different from the Disney version. The kids still enjoyed it. After the show, we made our way to a computer to quickly check e-mails before heading to Harrod's where we thought we would eat dinner. We had planned to do dinner at Planet Harrod's which is a kids restaurant by the toy section that plays movie while you eat. Well, unfortunately for all of us, it was closed when we arrived. It actually turned out okay because the kids had a lot of fun playing in the Harrod's toy section. It was just as nice, if not, nicer than Hamley's. After basically dragging them out of the toy section, we went to the Food Hall where we picked out Krispy Kreme donuts and cupcakes to take home with us for Abby's actual birthday. It was late when we got home and turned out to be a longer day than anticipated when we waited at the bus stop for 30 minutes for our bus. We finally made it home though, fed the kids quickly and put them to bed. Mike and I then started packing up our stuff to leave tomorrow.

Computer troubles

Well, our computer has crashed again. While last time it was only a corrupted Windows, this time it is something with the electronics and the computer will not even come on. We have taken it to a place in London, but it is not likely they will be able to fix it before we leave. We leave tomorrow (9th Sept) for Beijing and don't know what our computer / on-line situation will be at this point. Luckily, we have everything backed up from last time so no real worries (except for loss of "contact"). On a positive note, we have had a great last couple of days in London and are looking forward to beginning the Asia portion of our journey; although not looking forward to the long flight and 8 hour time change tomorrow! We'll post more when we can...stay tuned!

Look kids...Big Ben, Parliament and Buckingham Palace

Sept 7th -- Today was planned to spend seeing some of the final sights in London, including Buckingham Palace. But first, I had to find a computer repair store. It was a little difficult since we couldn't get on-line to look one up. So I headed to the train station near our apartment in hopes there would be one nearby. I found a Starbucks and decided to head inside to see if they could provide a recommendation (plus, I needed a Starbucks). They weren't sure where one was so after walking around and asking various people for almost an hour, I was finally pointed to a store that was basically a 100 meters from where I initially started. I entered the store and gave my best sob story (with most of it being true) to see if there was anyway that I could get them to fix my computer within 2 days before we left for China. The guy at the store was very nice and understanding, but wasn't sure if anything could be done if they didn't have the parts necessary. He was pretty sure it was something with the internal electronics. I left not having a good feeling that we would have a computer anytime soon. When I got back to the apartment, we took off for our sightseeing. Well, we first had to make a trip back to the mall. We had bought an umbrella at a travel store because we thought it was a good, compact umbrella. When we got home and opened it up, it was no better than the one's you can buy from the street vendors. So after returning it, we had lunch at a little Italian restaurant near the mall. They were advertising free lunches for kids...just our kinda place. We then headed to Buckingham Palace. We had pre-ordered tickets to see the state rooms of the Palace, which are only open during August and September, when the Queen is away. It was a good tour and included a special exhibit celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Commonwealth. After the tour, we stopped at the afternoon cafe for tea and a scone. Surprisingly, this was our first afternoon tea since arriving in London and it did not disappoint. Abby actually got the scone as her dessert (which included the clotted cream, strawberry jam and fresh strawberries), but I think Amy and I ended up eating most of it because it was so good. After leaving Buckingham Palace, we took the bus over to see Big Ben and Parliament. We actually thought we would be able to enter Parliament, but it was already closed for the day by the time we got there. So we walked up the street to see 10 Downing Street, the home of the Prime Minister. We then headed back towards Parliament and across the Westminster Bridge to the other side of the Thames. We had dinner planned again with Angel and Karim at Canteen. We had a little time to kill, so we found a playground near the London Eye where the kids were able to play. Around 6:30 we headed over to the restaurant for dinner. Canteen was a restaurant that had traditional British food. Amy had fish and chips and I had pie. It was very good and again a great meal with Angel and Karim. Angel was even so nice to bring Abby a birthday present. It was a little purse/bag and color set. It couldn't have been a more perfect gift for Abby.

Shopping and Playing

Sept. 6th -- We decided to make a run to a local mall today. Austin was in need of some new shoes. We all bought new shoes before we left, but Austin's were definitely showing the wear of 7 months of traveling, walking and playing. We took the bus to Westfield Mall, it was a very large, nice mall with almost every store imaginable. It had a GEOX store, which was our destination. While Amy and I were checking out what shoes to get Austin, he immediately looked and pointed out his pair...shoes with green trim. Now green is Austin's favorite color, so this was no surprise. However, they were lime green but it's what he wanted. Plus, we were just happy that he didn't pick out the Spider-man ones. He of course had to put them on immediately and then proceeded to jump and dance around in his new shoes. He was so excited about them. It was fun to watch. After leaving the mall, we decided to take the kids back to the Princess Diana Memorial playground to burn off some energy. They played for a couple of hours before we headed back to the apartment. We had planned to come back and finalize a few of our travel details and update the blog. However, we came back to find the computer dead. It would not turn on. I was hoping it was just the battery, but after multiple attempts of plugging it in to different outlets, we finally determined it was something wrong with the computer itself. Of course with it being a Sunday evening, there was no place to take the computer until tomorrow morning. While we were upset about the computer, we were much better off than last time because we had all of our data and files backed up and weren't worried about losing anything.

Jersey Boys

Sept. 5th -- Amy and I had a baby sitter for tonight, so we decided to do another "fun" activity for the kids today. We left the apartment and headed towards Trafalgar square. We had lunch at Subway since that is Abby's favorite place. We then headed to the nearby Transportation Museum. The museum traces the history of London transportation from the horse and buggy to the steam train to today's modern transportation. It is full of life size replica's of various vehicles that included steam engines, subways cars and buses. It is very kid friendly and the kids loved playing on all the different vehicles. They even had clothes for them to dress up like bus drivers and play on the buses. They had a great time and we spent the entire afternoon at the museum. We headed back to the apartment in time for the baby sitter to arrive. Amy and I then headed to Leicester Square in London to find something for dinner before our show. We actually ended up finding a nice cafe right across from our theater. We sat at a table on the sidewalk in front of the Prince Edward theater and enjoyed people watching. We enjoyed a lite dinner before heading into see Jersey Boys. The show was awesome. What was most impressive was the actors being able to sing like the Four Season's...especially like Frankie Valli.