We are back....

Here is a quick little recap and a few pictures...

This was the best trip I have taken so far. Henry was really excited about going and VERY happy and excited to be there. He kept an amazing journal! It may have been a little ambitious to take him because the schedule on these trips can be so grueling but he really, really loved it. And he was fantastic. He never once complained about anything... too hot, too cold, too tired, 10 days of carrying luggage, food with eyeballs and/or bones, up at 6AM most days, back to the hotel at midnight or later, trudging on and off 6 airplanes, 2 boats, a train and many, many busses!

In fact, each night he would shower and get in bed and while I took my long awaited shower he would put little notes written on the hotel stationary under the blankets of my bed saying things like… “Mummy, this was the best day of my life.” Or “Mummy, today was worth $400000000. I love you.“

It was AMAZING how much he LOVED it there! ME too! I want to go to Tibet now and Henry wants to go to Egypt.

All the Asians were FASCINATED by Henry and kept trying to touch him and take pictures of him. They were flocking around him constantly (He didn’t like that but he didn’t complain… he would just whisper “Muummmmy they’re doing it again”
Kids of all ages came up and said hello, hello. Business men begged to have a picture with him. Families pushed their children next to him and snapped away. Poor Henry, they all thought he was a girl, because his hair is so long, I guess.

One day we climbed the Great Wall which was harder to do than I expected. We set a goal for how far we were going to climb and when we got to our goal, there was a camel ON the wall. He got to ride a 2 humped camel ON the Great Wall.

We visited 4 cities in 10 days. We took the Maglev train in Shanghai ... went 268 mph to the airport! - World's fastest supposedly, although I do think the Shinkansen in Japan is the same. An hour ride to the airport on a bus took us only 7 minutes and 20 seconds!

In addition to all the other places we PLANNED to go, we also unexpectedly (luckily) got to add a few stops. Besides the many museums, tombs, temples, walls and soldiers, we toured a jade factory, a cloisonné factory, a pottery factory, a silk factory and a furniture factory and we went to a school where they demonstrated the art of ink drawing. We took a 4 hour cruise down the Li River in Guilin. It is supposed to be one of the prettiest places in the world, I think I agree.
Coming home our plane in Shanghai was WAY overbooked so we took a bump and went 1st class to Vancouver, then to LA and we got $500 bucks in compensation for "our trouble". It was fabulous. The only bad part was we got back about 4 hours later than we had planned to, so we couldn't get our dog from the kennel or go to bed as early as we wanted to.
The entire trip was REALLY fantastic and I was VERY proud of Henry. He was an angel and very interested in everything we went to see.
Here are a couple pictures.