We made it to Beijing. The flight went smooth and Janie did great. We got to our hotel around 11 pm so we had been traveling for over 20 hours. Janie didn't sleep on the first flight but the second flight, Tokyo to Beijing, she slept the whole way. As for the jet lag, we're doing okay. We were all up at 5 am this morning but we got a fair amount of sleep.

The next day we hit the ground running. Our guide met us in the hotel at 9 am and we were off. We had a guide and driver for the entire day. The first stop the Chinese Friendship Store. A very popular tourist stop on the way to the Great Wall. Janie and I couldn't resist a photo with Happy Buddha. Rub his belly for good luck, rub his head for cleverness, and rub his ears for a long live - We did all three -- we'll let you know how it goes.

The Great Wall. It is truly amazing how they built this and why. I'm not going to go into the whole history lesson but it was pretty cool.
After the Great Wall we went back to Beijing to a Hutong District. This district houses thousands of people and has been around for centuries. The streets are very narrow and most tourists travel through the streets by rickshaws. Our guide also set up a meeting/tour of a family home in the district. Most of the homes will have all of their family living together. The home we visited has three generations living there. The woman that we visited with was kind and very worried about Janie. Miss Janie took a nap in the car ride and was in a zombie type state. I think we spent 50% of the time trying to convince this woman that Janie was okay. We did all of this through our guide who was doing the interpretation for us. The women gave Janie a coat to wear and put a blanket over her. She also kept coming over to Janie and feeling her forehead. I kept thinking she was going to whip up a Chinese herb potion for Janie to knock some life back into her.

Here we are in the home. You can see the adult coat that the woman gave to Janie to wear.

Then we went to a traditional Chinese tea room. The teas were great and we're given all sorts of reasons why tea is so good for you, which I believe to be true.

We ended the day at the Chinese Acrobat show, truly amazing. We were all entertained. I couldn't take photos during the show but afterwards we had a photo opp with one of the performers.