Riding the train

Last Thursday, Andy's mom Duease arrived for a visit. This past weekend we took the overnight train to Beijing for the weekend to see the sights. Riding the train is an experience! We left Suzhou around 8PM and then arrived the next morning in Beijing around 7AM. The kids absolutely loved riding the train! On Friday, Tori knew that we were going to be taking the train in the evening and kept asking, "Is it evening now?" She was so excited. Overall the kids slept really well on the train. I think that this is going to be a great way to travel throughout China. There are different levels of accommodations on the train and we traveled hard sleeper on the way there and soft sleeper on the way home. Contrary to what it sounds like, the difference is not the softness of the bed. In hard sleeper, there are 6 bunks in one compartment and no door between you and the passageway. Since there were 6 of us we had our own compartment, but my least favorite thing about hard sleeper was the toilets. Yuck - I won't even submit you to pictures! Soft sleeper is nice and has more room (only 4 beds) and an actual door that locks. The toilets were a definite step up. (but then you do pay more for these amenities). We found the lighting humorous in hard sleeper though - they turned the lights off at a certain time to tell us to sleep, then in the morning the turned the lights on again to tell us it was time to wake up. But we really enjoyed our train ride and I know we will travel this way again.....

posing with a woman we met

Hanging out before bed - can you spot all 6 beds?

Josh watching the world go by - early morning (a little after 6) when they woke us. Isn't this a great picture?