Summer Palace

Home of the Emperor during the summer - hence the name, Summer Palace.  This is more than just a summer home - it's more like a Summer Village.  Unfortunately it was raining immensely hard that day so we didn't see as much as we wanted here, but what we did see was beautiful!

Me, my double chin, and my poncho somewhat ready for the rain.

The One and Only Great Wall of China

Two super cute dudes ready for some fun! (Wilson, left and Braden, right)

Typical Chinese Market

View from the top - the light colored line you can see across the top of the
mountains is the Great Wall stretching on for miles!

Ode to Mao Zedong - still not sure why they love that guy

The way down

Woo hoo!  What a ride!

China!!!

At long last I'll be posting about our trip to China in April.  I realize this is very delayed, but I've got a busy life and really need no more excuse than that.

We headed for China on April 20th at 7am our time and landed in Beijing at 3pm on April 21st...talk about a long flight!  My brother-in-law,Neil, picked us up from the airport. It was easy to spot him as was the only 6'4" person with bright red hair among all of the hundreds of people there. We stayed in Beijing for the first 3 days of our trip.  While in Beijing we saw the Great Wall, Summer Palace, Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, lots of markets, and Hard Rock Cafe Beijing.

I must say that Beijing is a very dirty city and horribly crowded, but other than that I loved it!  It was so nice to have Neil as a tour guide and interpreter.  The next few posts will just be a picture documentary of our time in Beijing with a few captions here and there.