Friday February 12th - Guangzhou to Beijing

Finally, back to getting a post done.  We have been on the go and have had no computer time.   The first two photos are from Fridya night - Isaac was in his pjs playing with David's belt while David read to Indigo.   On Friday morning our group was going to the Chen Family Temple.  David and I had been there before in 2007 and it's an incredible place, not to be missed.  However, since we had been before, we thought a park might be more fun for the children.  Grandma and Granddad went with the group to the Chen Family Temple - really a learning and art center - very beautiful.  They had a wonderful time with Grandma's big complaint being that I had not told her not to take her wallet - yes, I was blamed for this round of shopping.  David, the kids and I took a taxi to the park - Yuexiu Park.   Entry for the day was free - we assume because of new year starting.    We had a great time and it was so beautiful with all the red lanterns hanging from the trees.   We also bought 4 bags of koi food and had great fun feeding the wide open gaping mouths of the fish.   We had a downpour while there but managed to find shelter.   We then let the kids have a ride on the carousel and also they went together on the other ride where they were on the train.   We left there and went back to the one shopping plaza we had been to.  It was a crazy frenzy of people shopping although one whole wing of the "department" store was locked up - to David's relief it was the one with all the pearls.   We caught a taxi back to the hotel (lest you think we suddenly became proficient in Chinese, our hotel concierge had a written card to give the taxi driver to show where we wanted to go first and then second and then the hotel address in Chinese for our return.    We only got back around 2ish and had to have the luggage ready for the porters by 4:30 so we were able to get the kids to sleep in our room - Indigo on our bed and Isaac in his crib while we dragged all our luggage and baggage into the living room and packed there.   Grandma popped round to see which of her items we could take in our baggage...  We and two other families were going to the airport - them to return home and us to head to Beijing.   Things went pretty smoothly and we boarded the plane for our 8ish flight.   We thought for sure that Isaac would crash but oh no - he was awake the entire flight and some of it was bit rough.   He was not keen on being restrained by the seat belt - oooh, 14 plus hours is going to be so fun.   Indigo was mostly quite good for the flight.  We arrived past 11 and after getting our luggage, met our guide Doyle who took us with the bus (necessary for our luggage) to our hotel.   It's very nice - we are in a two bedroom/two bathroom apartment.   Unfortunately, both bedrooms have double beds so grandma is in one room, David, the kids and me are in another and granddad is on a rollaway in the living room but that is very spacious and means that we can all be in living room while children go to sleep in our room or nap there (not that we have been here a whole lot).   There was no crib so we had to wait for that to be delivered.  When it was carried in it was definitely some IKEA special and must be on some recall list somewhere because the side spindles were all falling out!  It was almost 2 by the time we got to bed.  Since Isaac had not slept he was near comatose state and fell apart when we changed him but he fell asleep really fast.   Safe arrival in Beijing!  More later about our great day on Saturday.   Photos for Friday here:

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