Beijing Dongfang Hotel

... expensive.  There were no obligation to buy which was good. July 3th - Today we were picked up from hotel at 8:00 am and visited the Beijing Zoo.  I wanted to see the panda at the Beijing Olympic Zoo.  Martina then took us ...

... of wall to wall bikes, it's now wall to wall cars, and they have that most ridiculous of regulations - a crawler limit on the Beijing Freeway! Even more useless was the control tower at the airport. You couldn't see the top of it for the smog. They might ...

... officially the first day of our 36 day tour. So we were moving from the rock hard Marko bed to the rock hard bed of the Dongfang hotel. Marko had a couple of job interviews so we were left to our own devices. Well our own device. Dway. We felt like two ...

... , adding another 4 hours onto the trip via the George'esque Ningbo airport. The immediate struggle on arrival in Beijing to give our taxi driver the hotel name was a foreboding sign of things to come... Our first night at the Hutong Courtyard Guesthouse ...

... , a western-style toilet, toilet paper, and even air conditioning.  Our hotel room, 12 stories up in the center of Beijing, could be any nice hotel room in any major city in the United States.  Even the view from the window is not what I think ...

... (€5) fooi bracht de dienster in extase, waarop het hele restaurantpersoneel ons kwam uitwuiven en ze persoonlijk elk trapje naar beneden toonde. Zalig. Nu genieten we van de rust op de kamer en plannen we een vrij dagje Beijing morgen! Slaapwel! ...

... of treated myself to a 'touche eclat' (you know what I mean beauty fans) after a rubbish sleep. Made the 1130am landing Beijing time.  Wow what an airport. You can keep your Terminal 5 Heathrow. After charming immigration and posing for the camera, ...

Vandaag ons eerste Chinese ontbijt achter de rug, viel wel mee, als je de typische Chinese noodles en andere vettigheden laat voor wat ze zijn. Om 8u30 al op pad richting Plein van de Hemelse Vrede en het nabij gelegen Forbidden City. Zoals je kan ...

I'm going to try to add photos here of the Great Wall.  This is a test!  I'm not quite sure if it will work or not - all of the prompt characters are in Chinese Characters, so I'm having a difficult time with it. Ok, so it didn't work.  ...