Can it possibly be May already? Time has passed so quickly.

Beijing on May day and Golden Week was astounding. We left Tianjin in the rain and feeling very let down. We could just picture visiting the Great Wall in the rain but the closer we got, the nicer the weather got and by the time we arrived the sun was shining and it was beautiful. We were taken to lunch at a Chinese restaurant where the food is served family style on a lazy Susan. Good food and very enjoyable. We were then taken to the Regent Hotel. It appeared very new and I think the basement was still being contructed. It was lovely. There was some confusion as we were told we had our choice of four restaurants but there was nothing in writing to tell us what each restaurant covered. Some people wanted the Chinese restaurant but because our bus was one of the later ones (out of 10) all reservations were filled and there was some complaining over that.

The second day we visited the Forbidden City with its tens of thousands of people. It had all been renovated for the Olympics and was beautiful. The previous time it was dusty and gray and not attractive. This time it was great. This was followed by the Square and then to lunch and back to the ship. The large busses had only about 12-15 people on board and we could not understand why. It seemed an unnecessary waste of money. Lunch again was Chinese style but the food was not as good as the first day. For example, the shredded duck with vegetables was 95% vegetables and we had to hunt for the duck. Mike, the chef, Heather, his wife, and Mark Conroy were all on our bus so we had a lot of interesting conversation.

Today we are having the usual town hall meeting followed by lunch in Signatures for the full cruisers. Tonight is a special dinner - Japanese Kareoke (that is not spelled right) and we were told one dish was a fish fondue. Just not our cup of tea.

Mark said the Voyager problem is hitting Apollo hard but did not go into details.

Ardis