On our way

We left for Beijing on Wednesday morning, Joseph's birthday.


He spent the day riding trains, mostly the Shinkansen.


Not a bad birthday for an 8-year-old.


We stopped for water bottles at one of Japan's ubiquitous vending machines.
It takes about 4 hours by train to get to Tokyo from Misawa, so we ate lunch when we first got on the train and were ready for dinner by the time we checked in for our flight at Narita airport. Luckily, we have a favorite curry restaurant there. It's sort of a tradition to stop there to eat on our way out of the country now.


Meghan wasn't hungry. Just sleepy.


A quick, four-hour flight later and we were in Beijing. We got to the hotel around midnight and crashed. Our wake-up call was 7 a.m. I woke up a little early and was able to take a few photos from the hotel window.

There wasn't much to see. Just a lot of buildings. Mostly buildings that looked like the ones in any other city in the world.


With a population of 9,532,000, Beijing is the ninth-largest city in the world.


Ah, finally, something unusual atop a neighboring hotel.


Hopefully, the rest of the day will yield better photos.