March 4. 2015

We made it! We’re so excited to be in China after what was a crazy, long flight. I will never complain again about the flight from Orlando to Seattle. 🙂  We left Orlando and it took just over 3 hours to get to Toronto, Canada. Once we were there, we had a 7 hour layover…luckily, we were able to sleep for a while in the airport. There was also a decent restaurant right near the terminal, so we had breakfast and lunch without having to go too far. Once we left Toronto, we got lucky because the nice lady next to Hayden switched seats with me so that we could all sit together. The flight had TVs with movies at each seat, so the time went by fast enough. The flight was over 14 hours, but Hayden was a trooper, so that definitely helped. It was actually pretty cool because we flew over the top of the Earth and had an awesome view of the Arctic! Hayden loved that!!

We had our first Chinese meal on the plane…Cup of Noodles…lol. Even if it wasn’t exactly “authentic”, at least we got to practice with chopsticks.

Once we made it here, we hired a car to take us to the hotel which ended up being a great decision. At first, we were pretty sure we got taken because a taxi or the train were quite a bit cheaper, but it turned out that at rush hour, the train is REDICULOUSLY crowded and there was a 1.5-2 hour wait just to get a taxi. After all of the travel, we were fine paying a little more to get to the hotel and get settled.

Today (our first full day), we went to the Yu Yuan Gardens…it was beautiful! Pictures can’t capture how pretty it was inside. It was overcast and a little chilly, but the gardens are inside of a wall, so there wasn’t much wind. There were lots of different buildings with artwork and antique furniture which I’m sure are even older than the US. My only complaint is that everything was written in Chinese characters, so we couldn’t read a thing. (I guess it’s pretty selfish to assume that things would be written in English!)

After that, we had tea in the oldest remaining Tea House in China! It was very cool, but insanely over-priced (which we didn’t realize until we already sat down). We were a little depressed about a $20 cup of tea, but chalked it up to an experience that we will never get again.

There was a huge shopping area just outside of there, so we walked around for a while before going to the People’s Square. The People’s Square turned out to be a big mall (we were thinking it was more of a historical place). It worked out fine because we found a good place to eat and relax for a while. They had clean restrooms (with Western toilets and toilet paper), and we found a good Noodle Shop, so we were happy. Hayden has discovered that he loves Chinese food and he wants to live here when he grows up. 🙂

So far, so good, but lots and lots of adventures still to come!