| Today was a day of travel. As you can see by the photo, we left the White Swan Hotel in the morning after getting up at 5am and while it was still dark. Our flight left at 8:35am and was about 2.5 hours long. Since we were up and out so early, we couldn't make it to the breakfast buffet, so the White Swan packed us box breakfasts. Luckily, Air China took pity on us and bumped us to first class, so we had wide seats with ample leg room and much nicer meals than we could have hoped for. It was a very pleasant surprise. The flight itself was rather turbulent, but otherwise uneventful and both girls did really well. Emily slept a lot of the flight with me, and Stephanie and Daddy sat up ahead and she slept lots too. All in all, it was a great flight. We were met at the airport and brought to the Novotel Xin Qiao hotel. It's no White Swan for sure. The location is great, though, and we arrived here shortly after noon. We found a good restaurant just down the street and sat and had delicious home made noodles in soup with delicious dumplings. We almost didn't go in. Danny was reading the Chinese signs as we walked along, and the sign for this particular restaurant advertised Dog Hot Pot. No kidding. Fortunately or unfortunately, we were tired and hungry so we went in anyway. Only after we were seated and had started eating did Danny start to laugh and say they also serve cat's ears. Yikes! Good thing we ordered chicken and beef soups with pork dumplings. The food was wonderful, though. We tried to convince Emily, our picky eater, that Budweiser is a kids' drink, but she remained unconvinced. Stephanie was her usual self, eating noodles, meat, dumplings, and anything else we put in her mouth. We had some paperwork to do in the afternoon and called it any early night. We did venture out for dinner and had some more noodle soup at a fast food- type Chinese restaurant and other than some late night grocery shopping for bottled water and milk, that was it. |
