Oops! Today was our last day before Lilymei

Our day began with a visit to Tiananmen Square and found the city hard at work preparing for the Olympic Games. This replica of the Bird's Nest and the Olympic Event Figures was beginning to take shape in the square. The entire display is being covered in beautiful flowers.
Here is the famous entrance to the Forbidden City Gates. How surreal to walk through an area that we have seen only on TV or in publications.
Here we are in the courtyard. Don't we look great and probably a little overwhelmed.
The 3 goobs being...well themselves as usual. We are still in the Forbidden City attracting plenty of stares. 

We had a great lunch with all of our CHI travel group families. Here is the famous Peking Duck being carved table side for our culinary enjoyment and delight. Did you know it takes 24 hours to prepare the duck properly?
Wow! The Great Wall is great and huge and steep and everything else you have read about it. We made our way up pretty far in the hour and a half we had alloted to climb. We were all impressed with ourselves. The local visitors were also impressed with how far we made it up the mountain and massive stone structure. Here Scott is holding onto the boys for dear life.
This is more than half way up and we made it to the top of this photo! We know we are rock stars and we don't have to complete anymore 5Ks once back on Guam.
We saw the finish line to the Olympic Cycling Road race, just within 100 meters of the Great Wall. Here is a billboard advertising the cycling event and announcing the Olympic theme of "One World One Dream".

Jean here:

We had a great day today!  Our time in Beijing was wonderful and we are so glad that we were able to be here before going to pick up Lilymei.  Beijing is the nicest city we have been to so far in our travels around the world.  It really is beautiful!

Needless to say we were quite tired by the time we got back to the hotel.  That didn't stop the boys from playing Ping Pong in the game room.  Natalee and Shannon, I thought of you two when I was trying to decide if I should get the body massage or the leg massage....I chose the body massage.  Ahhh.... 

Well, it's 11pm and time for bed.  We have a 6am wake up call and our flight leaves for Hohhot at 11am. We should have Lilymei  in less than 18 hours from now.