Journey with Julia

Beijing Day 1

Walking seemed to be the order of the day our first day in Beijing. Did you know that Tian'an men Square is the largest public square in the world? having been there and walked a good deal of it, I do.

We went directly from the Square into the Forbidden City, this is the old palace complex. Fascinating and unbelievably ongoing. After the Forbidden City it was lunch, and then to the pearl factory. Our guide Tom thinks that we walked about a total of 5 miles our first day and I can believe him. Ray found the Starucks in the Forbidden City and made me take that picture just for Ms. Grundy;)

I have no idea what order these pictures will come up in on here, but I'll try to give you a few to just give an idea of the things we are seeing here. I also snapped a couple of our luggage opened up so that you could see how much we had in the two large suitcases and also we each had a carryon plus the laptop. Believe it or not, we have the LEAST amount of luggage of anyone in our travel group! (except our one friend who of course is traveling alone) So hard to believe that the packrat who is prepared for anything got pared down this far. I think he was shocked to see how much everyone else has, though I don't think some of them truly understood the only 44lbs per ticketed person on our flights today. We'll see how that goes for them. I hope they don't lose anything. I'm just still in shock that we had the least. LOL.