The voyage of the luggage

Let me set the scene. We get a call in the morning saying we that they found our luggage and it's still in Chicago. Japan Airlines and American Airlines are blamng each other. We were on our way to the Great Wall (which was and is great, by the way) and it really took the wind out of our sails. I'll write more about the wall later, but unfortunately this whole trip has turned into the saga of the luggage. After the Great Wall we took a tour of the traditional areas of Beijing, which were not nearly as interesting as that sounds. It was raining the whole day and kind of depressing.

Then we went to the tea market, and had an amazing visit with a tea vendor who sampled green tea, oolong tea, aged black tea, another kind of aged and fermented oolong tea and tea made from baby chrysanthemum flowers. Best moment we've had here. Then we blew off a special dinner in a top restaurant and started scrambling to buy things, since we're about to go places where you basically can't buy anything. Got underwear, shampoo, toothpaste, that kind of stuff, at a supermarket, then to a mall to buy pants, t-shirts, and way too many other things. We got some, but not really enough. It was 9:45, we were both exhausted, we had both been missing our prescription medications for several days and weren't sure about the wisdom of proceeding.

So we headed back to the hotel to decide whether or not to carry on or to just chuck it and go home. I'd had this voice in the back of my head saying "this is a disaster, let's just go home," and so had Ronnie. We walked in the hotel room at 10:15 and our guide called and said, "Where are you? I've been trying to call. It's 9:55 and the airline just called and the bags are in Beijing and will be delivered to the hotel between 10 and 12."

Our first thought was that we'd believe it when we saw them, and our second thought was that it was a good thing we'd rubbed the happy Buddah's tummy for good luck during the tea ceremony. At 11PM the bags arrived, and the trip is saved. We're off to Xi'an tomorrow.

Stay tuned.