Made it to Beijing

Carrie and I finally made it to Beijing. We just checked into our room about an hour ago. Our tour of Beijing should be informative and relaxing. We have our own personal English speaking guide who will go with us to all the tourist sites. We also have our own driver that will drive us around Beijing. Tomorrow (which is Wednesday for us) we are going the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square in the morning and then the Summer Palace in the afternoon. On Thursday we are going to the Great Wall and Ming Tombs. On Friday we are going Beijing Zoo to see their 5 pandas.

The trip over was very long. The more expensive seats we purchased for the flight from LA to Guangzhou were comfortable and well worth it. I would have gone crazy in the coach seats. Even with the comfortable seats and the help of prescription sleeping pills, I was unable to sleep on the LA to Guangzhou flight and only got about an hour's worth of sleep. Apparently, I am immune to Ambien. I took the prescribed dose of two pills, and then took two more after 2 hours, but still never got any real sleep.

We are very much looking forward to meeting Maizie on Sunday and will post more later. For now, we got to try to get some rest.

p.s. Happy birthday to my Dad who turns 56 today.