China!

Well it is that time of year again, when my mom rescues me and takes over. Sweet relief. We decided to take advantage of Nana’s incoming by leaving our offspring to wander around China…alone…together….whoa. Can we really just bring one bag? Yes. No diapers? Yes. No booking hotels based on the dimensions of the bathroom for a pack and play? Yes. Whoa. Needless to say, we love the girls and taking them to exotic places but to be alone with Mark? For a whole trip!? Sign me up. I met Mark at that airport and we giddily skipped to the gate but all over the airport I kept seeing things in the airport that reminded me of trips with the girls like: “that’s the spot where Amelia spilled an entire jamba juice and we had to put napkins all over the floor” or “that bathroom has the best changing table in this terminal” or “that’s where Syd likes to lick the window while looking at the planes”. We have such a system (surrender to total chaos) when we travel with the kids so It felt strange not having them with us but we quickly got back to our old routine of traveling together (walk slowly) and of course tried to be the last to board the plane. We came armed with a paper with Chinese characters apparently telling the taxi driver to either dump us in a river or take us to our hotel. Fortunately we were spit out into an alleyway and given a hefty finger point in one direction. Needless to say, after an hour of mouth gaping stares (by us) at all the delicacies on sticks we made it to our hotel. We rented a room called the "servants quarters" of an old courtyard style home. Since I'm writing this blog during the glorious yet finite part of the day labeled naptime, I'll tell the rest of our trip story in photos. Beijing!

Stick yum

Awkward photo with many people watching us take it (wait! that's all our photos) so much to write here but afraid of not being able to get another visa. I was reading a book on the history of Tiananmen square during our travels-so much more to learn about this time in Chinese history.

The Forbidden City allows hat coordinated tour groups to enter by the droves

bad photo of bad photos

Hopped on a local bus to the summer palace and made it just before closing. So of course we decided to walk around the entire lake in the spirit of "what wouldn't we do if the kids were here?"

City view from the top of China World Tower GREAT WALL

bad idea to eat so much dried fruit before a hike??

Decided to walk as far as we could go and ate lunch at the crumbling part, mom was angry we didn't shove the dirt into our bags to add to her exotic rock menagerie

Eating fresh....

Rock graffiti to Syd and Meli

To our delight- not many people on the wall to judge us for taking strange pictures.

True to historical fact- 14th century wall workers also came down the mountain on roller sleds...

Neckface must be a big insult to the locals..you neckface! burn!

The Younger duo doing our acrobat routine. HANGZHOU We took a flight then the speed train to Hangzhou to see the great West Lake. Side note: my grandmother used to come here for holiday when she lived in Shanghai

Trying to decipher the train schedule.....

Remembering what Spring feels like

Looking studly on our rented bikes-you can't imagine how many people took photos of the two of us riding around...luckily we had bells

Successfully made it to the top!!...of 15 stairs

Stumbled across a team building exercise?

And prime wedding photo backdrops

Ahhh. bliss. SHANGHAI some of you may know my family history but visit Shanghai was really special for me. My grandmother who grew up in Harbin spent most of her early youth in Shanghai and my mother was born here.

mmmmmmmmmmmm

incredible skyline! All the lights turned out at 830pm and everyone cheered. confusion! But then we later found out it was earth hour...so we gave out a delayed cheer

listening to jazz at the Peace Hotel, one musician could definitely have played during gma's time

Wandering around while looking up