China: Overview
China, a life-long dream fulfilled.
Ever since childhood when she read Pearl S. Buck's books about China, Dru has dreamed of making a trip to China. Quite unexpectedly, the opportunity presented itself. It was a group trip organized by a local chapter of the Navy League through the Citslinc International Inc agency in Los Angeles. It was an excellent tour. The best part was we didn't have to make any decisions. Everything, including hotels, meals, tours and transportation, was planned for us, and planned very well. And when you're in a foreign land, don't speak the language and few there speak yours, having no decisions to make and someone always there to point you in the right direction is a big plus.
The group rendezvoused at the Navy League office late in the afternoon on a Wednesday for the bus ride to the international terminal at Los Angeles LAX. We checked in and eagerly awaited our 12:30 a.m. departure. It was a non-stop Air China flight from LAX to Beijing. The flight was a bit grueling, almost 13 hours. With the time zone differences, we arrived in Beijing at 5:30 in the morning! Baggage and customs went fairly quickly and we were soon out the door and on our buses.
To the hotel? No, can't check into the hotel until the afternoon. Instead, literally minutes after completing our trans-Pacific flight, we were off on a full day of touring. But the excitement of being there kept our energy levels high.
We spent three full days in Beijing enjoying the sights and, of course, shopping. Shopping was always available. We then flew on a domestic Air China flight to the Shanghai area and spent four nights there. The last day was a light tour morning with an afternoon flight back to Beijing to connect with our long evening flight home. We finally arrived back in San Diego at 8:00 p.m. Friday evening, tired, exhausted, but absolutely elated about the trip.
Our Group
Altogether there were about 90 people on our tour. We were split into three groups of 30, each group assigned to its own bus for the duration of our time in China. That gave plenty of room for our purchases, plus gave a small enough of a sub-group that we could all get to know each other. Our bus was SB3. That was important to remember, because that was the sign we followed as we toured China.
We traveled with our close, long-time friends Joyce and Chuck and their friends Nedra and Jim. We quickly made friends with Sherrie and Don from the Los Angeles area.
Here's the SB3 gang. The photo was taken during our trip to the spectacular Great Wall of China:
That's our group. Now on to what we saw and did on our magnificent China trip.