A trip of Olympic proportions

So lets start this post by fully admitting that I am potentially one of the luckiest people alive. About 2 weeks ago W. came home from work one night and said the flights to Beijing aren't very full, Do you want to go and try to see the Olympics. My answer was of course yes, but we're in the middle of a financial forecast at work, It won't be easy. So I started doing as much work ahead of time as possible, and working very very late trying to get a few more things done so my bosses and co-workers wouldn't think I'd abandoned them. It all managed to work it's way out, so last friday I got up at my old start time and caught the 5:47 bus to Bart, took bart to the airport and started doing just a touch more work at the airport. The T-mobile connection there is not exactly lightning fast, but at least I was available when people had questions, and managed not to burn a full vacation day on a half day anyway. I met up with longtime travel bud Dave, and new travel bud Bon, and off we went in some comfy first class seats to Beijing. The meal was a delicious veal dish, and I managed to catch Kung fu panda, 3000 B.C. and Charlie Wilson's war (although I have spent the last few days calling it Charlie Murphy's war). We arrived in Beijing in good spirits, found a very helpful young lady who added minutes to my china mobile phone card, and off we went to our hotel, the Holiday inn Express Beijing Minzuyuan. Trouble is the hotel is really really new, so cabbies don't know exactly how to find it and the little back alley its entrance is on. After several calls to the hotel, we finally made it, and got settled in and met up with W and the rest of the girls who had been on the ground since the day before. The view from our hotel was incredible, it was unbelievable that such a location would still be available with the Olympics going on. Oddly enough the hotel is right above some sort of theme park, so the outside is coated in a fake stone that you can see in the upper left corner of the picture. The boys walked out to an ATM, and then we grabbed a beer in the hotel's inner patio, which wasn't easy, still part of the newness deal, they hadn't quite figured out how to get us all a beer in an expedient manner. We were starving then and found our way out to Qianhi lake to eat at our favorite restaurant from last trip. The group split, Millie and Dave came with us, and the rest of the group went off to find a store they were looking for and would come meet us. Having traveled with this group before we knew this meant they were more likely to forgo dinner than anything else. We were disappointed when the restaurant somehow had didn't have the beef or chicken dish that we really liked, but really enjoyed the dishes they did have. We went to bed that night, still no tickets in hand with lots of doubt about whether or not we'd actually be able to score any. At that point I was already making plans to come home Monday. When I arrived in Beijing I had lots of emails from facebook saying I'd been tagged in some photos, and much to my surprise someone had dug up photos from our days in Auburn. This one is absolutely my favorite. Every Friday during football season Anthony (sitting on the roof to my left) would pull this VW bus right into the middle of campus near the eagles cage, and we'd meet there on Saturdays, cook up some brats and drink a few cold ones before the game. They are some of my best college memories.