Yes, folks, we have arrived in Beijing safely. Now that that's out of the way, let me tell you about the trip...
First off, having decided that it was a tour group with porters and things, I was going to treat myself and bring my flat iron. Which then, of course, I left at home when Stuart started to panic that we were going to be late. And then, I managed to leave my fleece jacket in the Departure lounge in Calgary. Off to a great start! :)
My plane left Calgary right on time and got into Vancouver a few minutes early. I met Mom without a problem and we had a quick snack and a short wait before boarding the plane for Beijing. I've said it before and I'll say it again - Air Canada sucks. Tiny seats stuck way too close together and some woman wearing WAY too much perfume. Apparently, there was an option to upgrade to first class, and if I'd known about it, I would have come up with money! Oh well. That flight left on time too, and I should have known it was going too smoothly.
We'd all oohed and aahed over Mt. McKinley (which by the by is freakin' HUGE!) and I'd gotten a stiff neck watching Alaska go past and started a movie, when the plane turned around. Just passed Alaska and we had to go back to Anchorage, to drop off a passenger having a medical emergency. We don't know what happened - some kind of heart trouble apparently; but we spent two hours on the ground, by the time they offloaded him and his luggage, refueled and loaded more food. The pilot burned fuel but we were still just over 3 hours late into Beijing. We had a couple minutes of nerve wracking because our guides weren't there, but they ran up about 10 minutes later and off we went.
I hadn't really thought about it, but the Beijing airport is the big white one with the kind of free form roof that you see on all the construction programs. It's big, it's clean, it's white and you need industrial sunglasses. Everything is so bright and sparkly that I imagine it triggers epileptic attacks fairly frequently. It's also huge! We had to take a train from our gate to the main building and it was a good 10 minute ride. The good news is that at 7pm, it's practically empty and we got our luggage and through customs right away.
The local guide is Marco and our national guide is Karen. They both speak pretty good English, which is nice and Marco has a great sense of humour. They took us out for dinner, which no one really wanted, since they'd fed us before landing (Chinese breakfast - Mr. Noodle cups! LOL) But it was really tasty. Then it was off to the hotel, where it hit home that China has no anti-smoking laws. The room is quite nice, but I feel like I'm stuck in a 70's movie - there are two ashtrays in the main room and one in the bathroom! I woke up this morning feeling like my sinuses had been scoured and I think it may be a two week phenomenon. Sigh.
I fell asleep about 10:30 last night (Beijing time) and woke up for good around 6am. Hence the early post! It seems that here at least, wireless isn't in the hotel, so you may have to wait for posts for when I can get time in the hotels. I'm off to breakfast in a bit and the group meets up at 9am. Today is the Summer Palace, the Winter Palace, Tieneman Square (Sorry, I really didn't spell that correctly) and our Peking Duke dinner. Here's hoping I can stay awake!
No comments:
Post a Comment