Harbin to Beijing - Lunch - yum

Tuesday morning we left for the airport early and said good-bye to our guide Eric (top picture, Nike Shirt) and our driver, Mr. Lee. They were wonderful and their guidance, direction and own pride and love of Harbin was evident by each story told, each tradition shared. Our flight to Harbin was on time, and we arrived uneventfully to Beijing airport, where we were met by our new guide Nancy.

Nancy got us immediately organized and packed us into a van and whisked us off to lunch.It was hot and sticky in Bejing and the smog/pollution was horrible. We had a wonderful lunch and this day was the beginning of the actual "tour" portion of our trip. We were to join 8 other families who were also making homeland tours with their families. I believe we were the only family that did an orphanage visit before the tour began which means we had better adjusted to the time change and had a bit more energy to start off with. Many had come in that day or later that day and Thursday was to be their first day of touring.

We were very fortunate because we were able to visit the Lama Temple after lunch. The Lama temple is fabulous and has about 15 different Buddah statues. We had been to this temple twice before, once on each trip to get the kids. We loved the tradition of buying incenses, saying prayers and throwing the incenses in the fires. Hannah and Ben loved it and found it very mystical. Next post with pictures..