Beijing Hotels
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Beijing Day 1
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Beijing£¬ Day1
This is Kathy speaking¡Actually my entry will begin in Hong Kong with our first calamity of the trip. We woke up plenty early to leave for the airport to head to Beijing. We made a vow to be adventureous (for us) and only use public transportation so we decided to take the free airport shuttle bus. One hotel person said it left at 6 am, another said 6:20 and still another said 6:30. So there we were waiting on the street at 6 am watching Hong Kong wake up. Weather was nice. After boarding at 6:30 and riding for about 5 minutes, in a sudden panic I told Jack: We forgot to take our money out of the hotel room safe! We jumped off the bus, dragging our luggage and found that our hotel was only 1 block away¡ªwe had been riding around in a convulted path to the various hotels for airport pickups. That was a huge stroke of luck. So we were able to quickly go in and recover our money, and be back outside ready to board the next shuttle. Got to the airport, checked in (no lines again), and was on our way to Beijing via Dragon Air, one of China¡¯s domestic airlines. Our arrival in Beijing about 1 pm was a bit of a disappointment¡ªthe city was covered in a gray, dingy haze with the sun barely making its way through the polluted air. Skyscrapers everywhere. High rise apartment buildings everywhere. Cars. People. Bicycles. We gathered our luggage and were praying that our promised guide would be there waiting for us and there he was. He introduced himself as Scott (pronunciation is similar to his Chinese name), and spoke in fairly good English. 32 years old, single, nice guy. Then we were picked up by our driver, Mr Chung. We quickly discovered that our visit to Indonesia last year allowed us to just sit back and relax and watch as cars, buses, bicycles, pedestrians make use of the streets with no concern for rules of the road Mr Chung is an accident waiting to happen, but he got us safely to our Hotel which despite some bad ratings on the Net, is quite nice. Probably a 3 star. After checking in, Scott and Mr Chung picked us up and took us the Temple of Heaven (just so-so), but followed by a fabulous Peking Duck dinner at a restaurant that had incredible service. I had thought that tour company meals would not be a highlight, but I have been pleasantly surprised. They brought the duck on a carving cart to our table. Did I mention they brought the WHOLE duck? After carving off the meat, he chopped off the head, split it in half, cut off the tip of the beak, and placed the half head on a special plate and placed it on our table as a delicacy. (You can imagine what I thought about that.) I really didn¡¯t like the way the eye kept looking at me. It was a wonderful 5 or 6 course meal. Fresh fruit always for dessert. Oh yes, for the ladies reading this, this fancy restaurant¡¯s restroom only had the squat toilets, so again, I was grateful for the ¡°training¡± I had in Indonesia last year and I handled it with aplomb. Oh another thing, Scott and Mr Chung did not eat with us. They were at a separate table eating different food no doubt. (That felt kind of uncomfortable, but although we invited them to join us, Scott said it was not allowed.) After dinner, we visited the Wangfujing Snack Street. This is where Jack experienced one of his planned activities: eating scorpion-on-a-stick. There were many many food stalls hawking all sorts of unpleasant looking items , some cooked and other s raw, waiting to be cooked on the spot in deep fryers or grills. Scott and Jack convinced me to have a bit of the scorpion and we have photos to prove it. Very crunchy. Tasted like chicken. Then it was time for bed. We were absolutely exhausted.
Latest Comments (2)
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Thanks for the updates!! (reply)
Mar 14, 2008 09:27 EST by jennirusow
It's been so fun reading the latest updates and getting an idea of what your days have been like! The great wall of China sounds amazing! I'm so anxious to see pictures!
I can't believe Jack already found his treat on a stick! :) Hehehe Good for you for trying it Kathy... I think you're much more brave than I would be! (The duck story kinda creeped me out too! I think I would have had to cove... show all
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