First day in Beijing

So our first day was a bit groggy since only Michelle slept after breakfast for a few hours. The breakfast buffet at the hotel (Novatel Peace Hotel) was pretty good, with american as well as chinese fare. I am about to go there again before our tour of Summer Palace and Temple of Heaven with our tour guide Jerry. We are supposed to meet another family today.

Justin and I both continued to feel the plane moving all day. We found shopping street, which was just a 8-story mall essentially. That was a short trip but got us out into the surrounding area. We got our panda phone and our AT&T iPhones simply don't work in China like I was told they would!! My work AT&T Nokia phone still works perfectly for some reason. I was able to bring a wireless router so at least I can connect to all my iPhone apps in the room since the hotel only has wired internet.

Justin, Matt and I used the small indoor pool. It had a skylight above it but really seemed to be the first 1000SPF pool ever. It was sort of hard to find, even with someone helping us find it through a labyrinth of doors.

For lunch, we stopped by the hotel buffet again because everyone just wanted to eat and sleep. It was going to be $25 per person yikes!! So I went next door to a place that had "Guanxi and Cantonese" and I was like YES! Spring Onion Pancakes!! We got the best "bun" food with pork, fried rice, rice noodle with beef, and super fantastic kung pao like chicken. All for $15 for everyone!! The kids were like "Why don't we open a restaurant that does this back home?" They finally understand just how good the food is here. The spring onion pancake was better in Nanning. But we will be back. I got to use my Chinese Food translator to tell them that it was to go. It has a "Conversation" mode to talk Chinese at the food places. Leave it to me to only have a Chinese translator on my phone that relates to food!! It is called China Menu and it has a picture of a panda on it for $4.99 in the app store.

We slept from around 4PM to 4AM this morning. The pictures from our first day are uploading as I type this so it will have to be in the next post.