Arrived in Beijing!!!!!!!!!!!

We arrived in Beijing after our long 14 hour flight from Chicago. The turbulent landing wreaked havoc on Mindy’s tummy, causing her to “lose her lunch” as everyone deplaned. Thankfully, she felt better immediately afterwards! Once we checked into our hostel…

…we walked over to Tiananmen Square, which included 2 security checkpoints.


We braved the restaurant scene for dinner and pointed to a picture that looked like eggs and tomatoes – it was actually really good!

The next morning, we explored the Forbidden City.

Apparently it’s a day of rest in China which serves as an excuse for many Chinese to become tourists themselves. We have never seen so many people in one place before!


Yet, even with all those people, we were somehow miraculously able to get this people-less picture:

Some of the translations of the signs into English were a little confusing at times. Here’s Mindy demonstrating what NOT to do according to the sign:

We are working on getting used to being stared at and the vast variety of new smells. Tomorrow, we will visit a section of the Great Wall and we have made arrangements to take an overnight train to Xining, with the hopes of getting to Lhasa. We’re not sure if our Tibet travel permits will be arranged in time for these plans, but we’re trying! We discovered that our blog is blocked in China so we’ve enlisted the help of a friend to post by proxy.

We’ll write again soon!
Mindy & Ligeia 🙂 🙂