Swains (and a Turner) In China

Well, after 4 months of inactivity, I decided it was time to start working on the blog again.

I seem to have stumbled on a bit of a bloggers paradox if you will. That is, when life is busy and interesting enough to be worth writing about, you are too busy being busy and interesting to write about it.

But now I have some free time and some truly great (and some not so great) experiences to document.

This particular post is about the most recent and certainly one of the greatest. This morning I put 3 wonderful family members on a train back to Shanghai where they will start their long journey home after a 2 and 1/2 week whirl wind tour of China.

I met my Mom, Dad, and Aunt Joan in Beijing on September 12th to kick things off.

Here are a few select photos of places around Beijing

The Summer Palace


The Forbidden City


Teinamen Square



The Great Wall




The Birds Nest (Olympic Stadium)


The Night Market




and the Hutong Area


We spent 3 nights here with a great local guide (Johnathon) and National guide (Ling). While the stops were a little short (and the mandatory shopping excursions in the Jade and Pearl "Museums" a little long) We had a fantastic time seeing some of the most impressive parts of Beijing (not to mention China).

For the sake of time and readability I guess I will do a new post on each city we visited. There are certainly enough pictures!

Its good to be back!