Sticky Rice!

Well Hello Everyone!  We just finished our first full day in China and had a pretty good run I'd say.  Lainey and I woke up about 4 this morning and just couldn't fall back to sleep.  We played on the iPhones as quietly as we could and listened to Christina snore! Sorry hun, secrets out! 

First lets talk about our hotel.  Its downtown Beijing and is a pretty large cube with a 7 story atrium in the middle and boy was the atrium rockin' last night.  I'm not sure what kind of  party it was but they had lights, cameras, a stage, dj, and a few hundred people doing improve and karaoke to the latest US hits of course.  And of course it was loud and we couldn't wait for it to end.

When we did get the day going that same atrium was changed over and its our breakfast area.  Really good buffet breakfasts here that American restaurants should copy!  More offerings for breakfast than I could keep track of.  Every time I went up I saw something I missed the run before. 

All of the families gathered at 9 to start touring.  Thankfully it was much brighter and much less smoggy than yesterday.  I think we have 8 families in our group from all over the country.  We all kind of have a bond already because you know everyone has gone through the same paperwork and time effort for the same reason.  We joke you know you can trust everyone because we've had more background checks than anyone short of the secret service!  Our guide here is the same one we had 5 years ago! George.  He speaks pretty good Chinglish as he calls it and always has a broad smile.  He goes through this same process with families almost weekly.  We took a bus ride over to Tiananmen Square first. The picture that you think of when you hear that is the student standing alone face to face with the military tank.  Nothing like that happened here today!  George gathered us together with our code name, Sticky Rice.  Whenever he needed us to move on our listen to the history lesson, it has stick rice, gather closely!  The square can hold 1 million people.  Its surrounded by government buildings and the Forbidden City. 

Just across the street is the Forbidden City.  The former Chinese Imperial Palace was home to the Chinese emperors and political center for hundreds of years.  Now its a museum. It has 9999 1/2 rooms according to George.  The half is so it had just less than the 10,000 rooms of his father's palace. But it covers 180 acres, so it took a couple hours to walk through and we only saw bits here and there.   The detail is extraordinary.  From jade statues to wood carving and painting and the engineering of it all.  I'll include several here.  Not many of you will get the chance to see this like we have twice now.  Lainey kept asking are we still in the palace and yes we were! 

 

 

After the palace it was back to the bus and down the road to the Hutong village.  This is older than the palace.  It is original family housing in Beijing.  Small square buildings with a courtyard in the center. That was the traditional home.  And they were built right against one another and with small roads only needing to allow people to walk or go by horse. Well forward 700 years and you have small block buildings with cars, rickshaws, bikes, scooters, and people's laundry all vying for the same alley ways!  We rode rickshaws peddled by drivers to an original Hutong home that made us real every day Chinese food for lunch.  No sweet and sour chicken I'm afraid! But very tasty.  They kept bringing us dish after dish.  Meatballs, cabbage chicken drum sticks, peppers and potatoes, spicy nuts, cabbage, cauliflower, and plenty of rice.  I felt bad we left so much on the serving plates. 

Believe it or not its time for dinner. So I'll wrap it up.  Had good luck with the vpn today and sure if I'll have the time to do this many pictures once we get Cameron next week, so enjoy.  Tomorrow the Great Wall!