Itinerary

On Wednesday morning, February 1 at 8:00am, an Alaska Airlines flight will race down the runway at DIA and power into the Colorado morning sky.   If you live in the Denver area,  listen closely. . . you might just hear us hollerin' with delight as the plane banks westward, crossing over the city and climbing over the Rockies headed for Seattle.
We have a few hours in Seattle and then fly overnight to Beijing.  Since we're going west, we will skip a bunch of hours and land in China at about 4:00pm on Thursday afternoon, Feb. 2.  We are scheduled to go to various historic and cultural sites each day.  On Friday we will see the Forbidden City and Tienamen Square, on Saturday Mia will get her wish to see the Great Wall of China.
On February 9, we fly from Beijing to Chengdu to visit the Panda preserve.
On February 11, we fly to Guangzhou to see the White Swan Hotel where we stayed when we received Mia into our family.  Hopefully, we can take a picture on the famous "red couch." Then we'll drive to Hong Kong which is really close and that night we fly from Hong Kong to Johannesburg, South Africa, arriving early Sunday morning.  (Pull out a globe and trace how long that flight will be!)
We'll peel ourselves out of our seats and climb aboard a little plane for the hop over to Gaborone, Botswana.  We arrive there at 10:00am on Sunday, Feb. 12. On Monday morning, we will get in the car and drive 10 hours to the north of Botswana to see the animals and visit Victoria Falls.  We'll get back to Gaborone on Friday and Bob heads back to Denver on Saturday.
Now the resting part will kick in!  No agenda for February 19-March 17!
March 17 we fly to Amsterdam.  Details are still sketchy for our time in the Netherlands.
April 23 we begin our journey home: 4 flights, changing planes, changing time zones--arriving in Denver at 11:45pm Denver time.  Highlight for the kids of the trip home: we're stopping over in Iceland for a short layover!