This Great Work

That is nearly 50 miles in 4 days.  It was a killer.  But it was worth it.  What did we do, you may ask.... We spent the girls' spring break in Beijing.  There is so much to do there and we didn't even scratch the surface.  But before we get to the sites we saw, I'm starting off with some (non?)interesting tidbits. Getting there: According to Google maps, it takes 10 hours 50 minutes to drive from Changzhou to Beijing.  But by high speed train you can get there in 4 hours.  It costs about $71 per person. Cheaper than flying. Faster than driving.  I will say that those are 2nd class tickets and the 2nd class car is a bit of a dive (okay, really quite the dive), but we have gone 1st class before and the upgrade wasn't worth double the price. We traveled at 304km per hour, which is about 188mph.  Really quite convenient. Population: Population reports are all over the place when it comes to China, but there are about 22 million people living in Beijing, plus or minus a mil

I begin with apologies about the formatting....half of this was written voice to text and when I transferred it over and joined it with what I had here, the formatting didn't match. I know I could fix it, but I'm behind on what I need to record so for now, I'm going to leave it as is. Because we were waiting for visas in December 2021 and trying not to accumulate 'stuff', we gave the girls a trip to Shanghai Disney for Christmas.  Thinking that our departure was just around the corner, it seemed like a perfect gift. But then of course, our visas did not arrive until March.  And then there was quarantine. And the Shanghai lock down. And then there was amped up testing, then difficulties traveling outside of the city. And then difficulties even traveling within the city.  So Shanghai Disney did not ever happen.  After things opened up we tried to hammer out some dates when we could go but there was always conflict. However, Tom and I finally made good our gift in Fe