Sofitel Wanda Beijing

... me the phone. "Tina, hi, this is Jessica from Pacific Delight Tours.  Your hotel was changed last minute.  It's okay, you can go with him.  He will take you straight here." We head to the Sofitel by Wanda.  So, the adventure ...

... in 1949. Other than the Forbidden City, not much development took place. Since Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms where instated, Beijing has been experiencing massive growth primarily around its city rings. The CBD(central business district) just due east ...

... to our first destination. Our hotel is superb and our luxury room was upgraded (twice!) to a Club Suite, with all the Club Sofitel benefits. AWESOME!!! :) After getting to know the hotel we went on a short night on the town and so some of its monument in ...

... was planned for us today by our tour guide, Sam Hu. After enjoying another lovely breakfast at the buffet at the ultra luxury Sofitel hotel, we headed on to the tour bus to begin our journey to the Great Wall at Mutianyu. This particular location of the ...

... , but no rain. Oh, yeah, it sure was chilly. :) Firstly, we went to see the Natural history museum in southern Beijing, which is a nice little public museum, showing some great items such as dinasors bones, other extinct animals and even a semi grotesque ...

... can be expected. :) After that we went to the Silk market, which is the famous (or is it infamous?!?) place to buy clothes in Beijing, and we bargained our ways to death, and ended up buying as many as 10 shirts, for ridiculous prices. :) Now we're back ...

... take a local flight to Xian. This is where I said goodbye to my family members as I would be left behind for studies at Beijing Language and Culture University. Sam the tour guide was nice enough to have his wife pick us up from the airport and dropped me ...

... Of Heaven, The Olympic village and more). Tomorrow we're off to Xian (a 2-hour flight from Beijing) and we'll stay at the number 1 (!!!) hotel there (Sofitel Renmin Square) for 3 nights. Unfortunately, this is the last of the free Internet we'd have over ...

... there is greenery everywhere.  Parks, lawns, trees and even planter boxes on the freeway.     Anyway we arrived at the Sofitel Wanda and checked in. My room is fabulous - I immediately took lots of photos.  I've only met 2 of my fellow ...

WOW, what a day! Checked out from SOfitel Royal Lagoon in Dongguan, and they even managed to screw up our chek out, since they called us a cab that could not carry our two suitcases to the airport, so they ended up sending us to the airport with the ...

... Tiananman square. Now we're back at the hotel, after a couple of drinks at the club, getting ready to check out. As the Sofitel say goes:""Life is magnifique". :) The next update will be from home. Take care and thanks for sharing the trip with us. :))) ...

... the cable cars. We had no choise other than to wait for our booked train for 2 and a half hours (while examining busses back to Beijing). All in all, a fun and tiring day. Tomorrow we say bye bye to Beijing and fly to our next destination - Nanjing. :) ...

So, it's not a myth that traffic in China is dreadful.  My father, uncle, two aunts and I leave Beijing at 9:15am and head to the Great Wall.  The trip was rather long: at 11am, we are stuck in traffic on a narrow street.  Think NYS or NJS ...

... was that we had to attend this meeting.  The Women's and Childrens Association in China was responsible for partly planning our trip in Beijing, so we owe it to them to attend, then they offer us Peking Duck for lunch. After lunch, I'm off to the ...

Back on the bikes for a tour of the Hutong ...

We had a great day today after a rather awful night because of the jet lag. We wanted to go to see the wall today but the train tickets for the train were sold out, so we bought tickets for tomorrow. Instead we went to two churches, a shopping street and ...