Denver to Beijing May 26-27

After staying up late to watch zombie TV shows with Stan, we departed home at 1am May 26 for the airport.  Check-in at American Airlines was chaotic (get bag tags at kiosks, then join 100 yard line for bag drop assisted by 1 employee).  We boarded on time for the flight to Dallas (exactly the opposite direction from Beijing, but Viking Tours apparently got a good ticket deal), took a 2 hour flight to Dallas, had a 3 hour layover, then boarded for China.  We had upgraded tickets to bulkhead (extra leg room), but due to "equipment change" (change in aircraft) they were not bulkhead but were ok.  The pillows we bought were good, and the 14 hrs just flew by!  Ironically, our flight from Dallas passed over Denver going northwest. 

We arrived in Beijing on May 27, and had to be fingerprinted by machine.  Diane never could get her right hand to scan after 15 min working with an attendant, but it didn't seem to matter.  We breezed thru customs, the Viking Tour rep found us easily, put us on a shuttle, and we got to the Fairmont Beijing Hotel by mid-afternoon.

We were impressed with the seemingly hundreds or thousands of high rise apartment complexes in the city, which are needed to house their population of over 20 million.  The tall building in the back is the tallest in Beijing...180 stories!

From our hotel window...

Diane had her first occasion to use a "squatty  potty" in the airport. These are the norm at least for the women's bathrooms. Weird but true! Glad we brought some of our own toilet paper!

Our room has a magical lighting system that makes the glass non-transparent when the lights are turned on.  Before:

 and after:

We met up with Jerry and Laura for dinner (they arrived about 1 hour after we did), and walked to a Chinese restaurant where we had pork, salad, and shrimp tempura.  The staff didn't speak any English, which made things interesting, but we did ok not knowing if they would take our credit card or not until the end (they did).  The waiter picked up Diane's purse up off the floor and put it on a chair, covering it with a small tablecloth - not sure what that was about. Maybe they didn't want us to spill food on it! ha!

Our room even includes gas masks!  I wonder what they are expecting to happen.

The weather was beautiful for our first day in the country. Thanks to a wind shift to the north, the smog had moved out, we had a little breeze, and we didn't have to break out the face masks!

The official tour starts tomorrow with the Forbidden City!