We've been wondering about it for a while now and yesterday afternoon we received our itinerary for our trip to China -- which is now, quite unbelievably, less than 3 weeks away...
While we were told about tix to the Opening Ceremonies the rest was pretty vague... something like "tickets to several events"... we joked about what those would be, trying to come up with the most obscure sports we could imagine... and well, it ended up being a bit of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Now don't get me wrong, we are thrilled ... pretty much anything after the Opening Ceremonies is the proverbial frosting on the cake... but (you knew that was coming) it was still hard to suppress a little nose crinkle when we did review it... so the likes of Michael Phelps, Venus Williams, the Hamm brothers, etc. will just have to do without our support... ha!
On funny thing that crossed my mind is that I am guessing we will have less of an idea of what is going on/happening at the Olympics being in Beijing as opposed to watching it all from home.
Here is our full (and - once again - amazing!) itinerary:
Thursday - Arrive mid-afternoon Beijing
Friday - Free until Opening Ceremonies - starting on 8/8/08 at 8:08pm
Saturday - Morning tour of Beijing incl. Tiananmen Square and Temple of Heaven / Afternoon Judo
Sunday - Afternoon Basketball
Monday - Free Day (but we're booked for an all-day Great Wall of China tour, the Great Wall - or at least the portion we're scheduled to go to - is about 40 miles away)
Tuesday - Morning Men's Badminton (Singles & Doubles)
Wednesday - Afternoon Women's Water Polo (Preliminary Rounds)
Thursday - Depart Beijing
So it should be interesting and a learning experience ... and we get to experience 5 different Olympic venues up-close and personal.
Ugh, here I am living in Beijing and cannot score any tickets to the Games! Life is not fair!! But I got to go to the venues a few times already and they are stunning; the pollution is even getting a bit better, though the rain keeps on coming all the time. Sounds like a great trip!
Posted by: James in Beijing | Friday, July 18, 2008 at 01:17 AM