(Our hotel room! That's Diego the Brazilian behind me!)
(the entrance to the forbidden city, located in front of Tian'anmen Square!)
(后海 [ho-high] bar street)
(Ah! I almost died when I saw this dog being pushed along in a stroller, I had to take its picture. It reminded me of my own dog, Molly, back home.)
(One of the most famous Beijing 烤鸭 [kao-ya] roasted duck places. very very tasty!)
(The entrance to the forbidden city at sunset.)Day One: Beijing
Our flight to Beijing was the scariest flight I have ever partaken in while being in China. Hainan Airlines, beware of the red and yellow logo that is Hainan Airlines. We left Chongqing in the early afternoon. As we were taking off I couldn't help but notice that the plane kept tipping from one side to another quite rapidly. The Chinese people on the plane were looking a bit anxious, and you know something is super scary if the Chinese start to flip out. We never really stabilized until the plane got to cruising altitude. The crew blamed turbulence...but I am not so easily decieved!
(The landing was just as scary, and the overhead compartments looked as though they were about to fall down, yeesh!).
Once we arrived and collected our baggage we headed out of the terminal only to be greeted by a friend of a friend of a friend in his Infiniti SUV to take us to our hotel (北京饭店 The Beijing Hotel). We were very fortunate to have such good friends on this trip. [My AFS coordinator (Ms. Ma) accompanied Diego (my Brazilian friend) and me to go to Beijing, but she also invited her friend Lulu and Taotao (who are a couple). It just so happens that Taotao is very rich and owns a cement factory. He is very kind and has a good sense of humor. He also PAID for our hotel, which would normally cost more than 1000yuan each night, and is a 5 star hotel. We weren't planning on staying in such an expensive hotel...but Ms. Ma informed us shortly before we left that for 3 nights we wouldn't have to worry about the hotel bill. However the last night we stayed in a significantly cheaper hotel because Taotao and Lulu returned to Chongqing.]
Once we arrived and collected our baggage we headed out of the terminal only to be greeted by a friend of a friend of a friend in his Infiniti SUV to take us to our hotel (北京饭店 The Beijing Hotel). We were very fortunate to have such good friends on this trip. [My AFS coordinator (Ms. Ma) accompanied Diego (my Brazilian friend) and me to go to Beijing, but she also invited her friend Lulu and Taotao (who are a couple). It just so happens that Taotao is very rich and owns a cement factory. He is very kind and has a good sense of humor. He also PAID for our hotel, which would normally cost more than 1000yuan each night, and is a 5 star hotel. We weren't planning on staying in such an expensive hotel...but Ms. Ma informed us shortly before we left that for 3 nights we wouldn't have to worry about the hotel bill. However the last night we stayed in a significantly cheaper hotel because Taotao and Lulu returned to Chongqing.]
The Beijing Hotel is where Nixon stayed when he visited China way back when. We put our stuff in our rooms and relaxed for a few minutes then Ms. Ma fetched us to go see Tian'anmen Square.
Our hotel was only about an eight minutes walk from the square and we got there just as the sun was setting. After snapping a few photos the police shoved the crowd out of the way so they could begin the flag lowering ceremony as the sun finished setting. We stood in the windy coldness for about 20 minutes and nothing happened so we walked across the street to meet my British friend Benjamin (who also happened to be spending some time away from Chongqing in Beijing before he went home to visit the UK).
It took ages to find a taxi willing to get us near to this famous Beijing roast duck restaurant! It was worth it though, in the end we had our own room, my AFS friend Carina from Germany joined us (she lives in Beijing with a host family). What I really liked about the restaurant was its location. It's located in an old Beijing style courtyard house（四合院儿 si-huh-yu'ar literally: four harmony courtyard). These houses are slowly disappearing to accomidate apartment buildings, some are being preserved though. The feel was very "old Beijing." Courtyard houses were the houses not too long ago in Beijing.
Carina went home, and we sauntered on down to 后海 Houhai [say:ho-high] a famous bar street along a lake in Beijing. The name means back-sea. Ms. Ma left us because she was not feeling well so Ben, Diego, and I popped into a more laid-back sofa-ish bar, listened to a man and a woman sing karaoke. They sang pretty well, then I realized that they must have been hired by the bar to entertain because they were the only ones singing. Kerry (another Brit) joined us and we chatted about our upcoming travel plans during this month long holiday for Chinese New Years.
Later we took a taxi back to the hotel. The next day Lulu and Taotao (our sponsors in a certain sense) would arrive, plus we needed sleep since we planned to get up early and see the Forbidden City.
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