We are in Beijing, China!

Mom & Dad, in their Chinese grandparent t-shirts, drove us to the airport this morning. We had a very pleasant flight to China. We were very lucky that we had enough United miles to get upgrades to business class. We have never flown business class before and it was divine! It was unbelievably cool to fly over the north pole and see all the sea ice - photo attached that we took out window. I must say that the flight went much faster than we expected. When we arrived in Beijing everything went smoothly - all signs exciting the plane were in English and our baggage arrived safely and we cleared customs. We changed some US $ at the airport. Our guide was waiting with our names and took us to the shuttle that took us to the Sino Swiss hotel. That was an interesting drive as we already saw how a lot of people ride their bicycles in the main roads and our driver kept honking at them. Also, there was a lovely young Chinese women on the bus who was very excited to talk to us - predominantly about U.S. movies and televisions shows - Prison Break is very popular here and she talked about Friends. The hotel is very clean and comfortable. We did have trouble figuring out how to turn on the lights in the room. I was trying to get David to phone the front desk but we both ended up taking a nap. I later figured out that you need to put the room key in this slot to turn on the lights - very clever - you can't leave the room without turning off the lights. We had a late dinner at the Chinese restaurant downstairs - there were a lot of interesting choices! We just each had a beer, some soup, cashew chicken and roast Beijing (Peking) duck (1/2 of one). However, we have never had the roast duck before where the neck, head and beak of the duck are presented too! Tomorrow off to Chengdu. P.S. Tonight, despite numerous reminders, David ran his toothbrush under the tap. Fortunately, the hotel provided toothbrushes in the room and he was using one of those toothbrushes.