Happy Chuseok in China

We are back from Beijing after spending 5 days of touring. Here are the things that I liked about the trip:
1) The Great Wall of China.
2) Sleeping in a bed that doesn't have metal springs piercing into your back. The beds at Loong Palace Hotel felt like fluffy clouds on my back. Plus, they had complementary white robes.
3) Having water pressure in my shower again!
4) Meeting a traveling Irish couple that we shared countless laughs and drinks with. Thank you truck drivers of America for all the dirty jokes you taught me while I worked at C.H. Robinson. They finally came in handy - Irish people thought they were funny, but then again, they did laugh at Lauren's rat poison joke.
5) The Courtyard Restaurant where I ate the halibut and Lauren had the giant prawns. The Lonely Planet can be deceiving, especially when it comes to it's choices of restaurants. We went into the Courtyard Restaurant expecting a casual setting with reasonable prices. We didn't think much about our clothes, obviously, we were wearing flip flops and T's. Imagine our surprise when we sat down and saw all the rich business men seated with their arm candy, dressed in suits and evening dresses. Talk about feeling out of place! Here is a more accurate description of the Courtyard Restaurant found on the Internet: Previously rated as one of the top 50 restaurants in the world by Conde Naste magazine, The CourtYard has a heralded reputation in Beijing as a first-class dining establishment. It is certainly designed to impress, making it ideal for a romantic rendezvous or important business dinner.
6) The Lebanese restaurant Lauren, Barry, Olivia, and I ate at after a night of high pressure bargain shopping. It was a strange feeling to be surrounded by middle eastern business men smoking hookahs, eating baklava and hummus, while sitting outside on a street patio in downtown Beijing. In my best Konglish "Very Strangey".

The worst things about the trip:

1) The tour that we eventually dipped out on. If you want to feel like a sheep in a heard (Baaaaa)- Join a tour to Beijing with 200 hundred of your closest friends.
2) The annoying tour guide that said "Yeah Yeah" after every sentence.
3) Canadian flags on backpacks. Dude, we get it....you're Canadian. You don't need to put five different Canadian flag patches on your backpack.
4) Trying to find contact solution in Beijing. We had a staff of 4 Korean people working on it, who would then each ask two Chinese hotel staff, who would in turn try to find someone who spoke English. After a taxi ride to 2 different pharmacies, I eventually struck gold at an optometrist, which luckily was still open after midnight.

The funniest thing I heard on the trip:

Chinese people will eat everything with 4 legs besides a table, everything with 2 legs besides a human, and anything that flies besides an airplane. We are glad that we saw China while living so close the it.

We really enjoyed seeing one of only two man-made ojects visible from space. We had good weather, watching the city prepare for the Olympics was cool (Shaina and Shaun- the swimming pool was a trip to see), being in a luxury hotel felt amazing, and we had a lot of laughs with friends and friends we met on the way.