China 2008: Arrival and Day 1 in Beijing
Theory and reality rarely go well together, at least when it comes to asian-run airlines. Granted, my previous experience is limited, but both Malaysia Air and Air China don't seem to worry too much about running their long-haul flights on time. My 12:40am LAX-PEK flight is still loading cargo at 12:40am and doesn't actually take off until nearly 2am. Ouch.
The seats weren't great, either. Thinner than even United or America's seats, they weren't too bad on comfort, but the service sucked. Food wasn't bad, but was decidedly average-- Asiana was clearly a few grades better, while even Malaysia Air made up for their lack of variety with better tasting food.
Things worked out okay in the end, because instead of the planned 5:20am arrival, I didn't get in until a only-slightly-less-unreasonable 6:00am and 25 degree F outside temperature. The tour guide and driver picked me up from the airport and deposited me at the hotel, which was a nice way to start the trip despite the absurdly early hour (and having to stress out my essentially-non-existent Mandarin).
Diana arrived a few hours later from Shanghai, then we wandered off to find lunch at a local shop. Walked southeast til we passed the You Yi mall and had lunch at a little shop that could have been in a former McDonalds-- it probably wasn't, but it felt a lot like it!!-- then took a cab to the Shichahai Lake (?) area to walk around the lake and see the sights. Beijing is a fairly spread-out city, which meant RMB25 to RMB30 on cab was fairly common-- quite a change from the RMB12 to 20 around virtually all of Nanjing. Still cheap, and unlike Shanghai's modest-but-useful subway system, Beijing's subway was virtually useless to us, so cabs were essential.
The lake area was a nice introduction to Beijing, including crazy the crazy locals walking on the ice (one of them did it in heels. Uh. Bad idea comes to mind...) Beihan Lake further to the south (just west of the Forbidden City) probably would have been nice as well, but we chose to skip it. This was also our first introduction to just how cold it was going to be on the trip. Instead of the expected 26/15 degree F weather we expected, it was a (still $%*@ cold) 35~40F/25F environment most of the time, which meant the days were actually tolerable. At night or in the wind was another story; the first three nights it wasn't so bad, the last two dropped another 5F or so . . . not so great.
Walking around the lake lead us to our first unexpected discovery-- "bar street" is evidently right at the SE corner of the lake. SCORE! :-D Walked around some more, had dinner at a random restaurant that was absolutely packed (always a good sign-- and it was tasty!), then cabbed it back to the hotel for the tour starting bright and early tomorrow morning.
