Hello from Beijing

We made it to Beijing safe, sound and really tired! We just hung out in the hotel last night and found out that we can't log into our blog, so I'm sending this to our friends and they'll post for us. Thanks Tim!

Today was a long and chilly day. We went to Tienaman Square and the Forbidden City before lunch. The Forbidden City is so much bigger than we thought. This is the off season here so we never ran into the crowds that we expected which was nice. During our tour, other groups kept coming up to our group to listen and take pictures of us. One family brought their 3 kids and they were the tourist attraction! I added a picture of them surrounded by Chinese tourists, pretty crazy!

For lunch we went to a traditional Chinese restaurant and the food was really good, Syd even liked it. After a stop at the silk factory (a required tour stop) we got to ride a rickshaw to a hutong. That is a traditional housing area in the shape of a square with a courtyard in the middle. We got to go into one of the homes and visit with Mrs Wu. The "house" is like a very small one room apartment with no bathroom or running water. She served us tea and told us about herself and her family.

Now we're hanging at the hotel and trying to decide what to do for dinner when all we'd like to do is sleep!! More tomorrow about the Great Wall.