Bye Bye Beijing, Going to Guangzhou

The good news is Hailie slept almost 8 hours; the bad news is it ended at about 1:30 in the morning.  Maybe by the time we have completed our 2 weeks here she will have adjusted to the time change.  We ended up down in the lobby about 20 minutes before breakfast  buffet opened up at 6:00, so that was a great opportunity to take a picture of one of our elevator operators. 

This was another day of hard transitions as all of our new found friends are spreading out all across China like a spider web.  Everyone loaded onto the bus together to get dropped off at the airport so the girl posse had one last rendezvous.  Everyone else got off with our guide George at the first terminal since we were the only family flying on China Air.  We then got some personal up close time with George for the fairly long ride to Terminal 3 where China Air is located (did I say PEK was huuuuuge?)  He majored in Tourism Management at University, so he is well placed based on his educational credentials.

Checking in at PEK is the way flying should be.  They take your bag right at the counter and you don’t have to do all the legwork to lug your luggage over to the TSA machines.  Then, where you actually go through security there was no line (Yes, I said No line!!) and we did not have the hassle of taking of our shoes.  On our way to the gate we found a little play area so Hailie was able to exercise her energetic little body to her heart’s content for over an hour.

The Princess in her new kingdom

 And, the most pleasant surprise was a vending machine with beer available (Tsingtao, please) for 1$.  The flight brought back memories of old time flying; we had a 3 hour flight that served lunch in those little trays coming out of the rolling cart.  We couldn’t eat much (would you like beef or chicken?)

Once we landed in Guangzhou we had the interesting experience of parking out on the tarmac a few hundred yards from the terminal, walking down one of those TWA style rolling stairways into a waiting bus.  Once inside the terminal, we spent a good 30 minutes or so waiting for our bags at the carousel where our flight was posted, only to find they had been spinning around another carousel farther down for a while (where our flight was most definitely not posted).  Guangzhou is the business capital of southern China, and you can see from the picture waiting for rides outside is not for those who don’t like crowds.  At least this time our guide Sarah was waiting and caught Kathy’s attention before we fully exited the baggage claim area.

Waiting out front for our van

The ride downtown was verrry interesting .  The driver was an absolute wild man behind the wheel (like most of the other drivers here) and pulled all kinds of hairy moves at 80 – 90 mph.  Checking into the Garden was a bit of a problem as they didn’t seem interested in giving us a room with 2 beds.  Once Sarah took care of that in her very assertive manner we got to our room and found ----- one king sized bed.  So, while Kathy and Hailie checked out the TV Steve went down to get our cell phone that was supposed to be waiting for us and Sarah was still in the lobby.  Once she found out we only had one bed she went into kicka$$ mode and went straight up to the reception people in the lobby and proceeded to get this corrected for us.  Sarah took us over to a Subway for our first taste of Western fast food fare since getting here and we then actually got Hailie to last until 8:00, when after getting into bed she fell asleep literally 30 seconds after laying down.  She slept until 4:45 Monday morning, so maybe we are finally getting to the point of being tuned into the time change.  We are now 4 hours away from Gotcha; the next post should be the one we all have been waiting for.