In Transit

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20th - 21st September

Just a quick blog to report that we arrived in China, safe and sound, and with ALL our luggage - hooray! The flights were great - we actually caught an earlier flight to Frankfurt, because we had stupidly not checked our tickets, and just assumed we were flying from Heathrow - WRONG. We were meant to fly out from London City Airport, but the people at Lufthansa were wonderful, and rather than send us back on the train for another 40 minutes (from where we had just come) they got us on the earlier connection, without cancelling any of our later flights.

This gave us a bit more time to make our connection to Beijing, and before we knew it, we were on our jumbo to China. The flight was only 8 hours long, and being overnight, we managed to sleep for at least 3 of the 8 hours. The plane wasn’t very modern - we didn’t have personal in-flight entertainment, and had to watch an outdated TV screen 10 aisles away, but the food was good, and the flight went by fairly quickly.

We arrived in Beijing at 8:30am and were at our hotel by 10:00am. Another couple were being taken into the city by our Guide, Barbara, so we decided to tag along, as our room wasn’t ready yet. We visited a Park that offered excellent views over the Forbidden City, which is massive. Some of the City is currently under construction, which means it has large green scaffolding covering the buildings, but when you consider that there is 720 000 square meters to see, the scaffolding didn’t really get in the way.

From this park, we walked down to the Winter Palace, and strolled around the monuments here for an hour or two. By 12:00pm it was really getting HOT; something which surprised me because I was expecting it to be cooler, but the temp easily reached 28 degrees. We were ready to get a rickshaw into the shopping district, and see what bargains we could find.

I bartered with the driver, until he was willing to take us both for 20 Yuan, but after driving through Hutong streets, and down other back alleys, to finally reach our destination, I felt bad and gave him 30. Neither of us had realised that it would be that far! There wasn’t much there in terms of shopping, so after some interesting KFC - the chicken patties have corn and carrot in them - we caught a cab back to the hotel, for a much needed nap.

By 6:00pm I was ready to go again, and we went in search of a supermarket - only to come across Silk Street Shopping Centre - ie - shopper heaven!! This place is 7 stories of markets, selling everything from fake Rolex watches (yes dad, I found one just for you) to jewellery and Louis Vutton bags! You can barter to your hearts content, which we did (or I did) and most of the time, we got them down from their original price quite a lot. The Rolex watch started at 850 Yuan, but we got it for 100 - about $15Aus.

We picked up scarves, sunnies, a custom made suit (which we would collect within 24 hours) and watches and bags - before the centre closed at 9pm. It really is a fabulous place to mingle with the locals, who try to entice you into the shops by calling, “Handsome Man, you want to buy watch? Pretty Lady, you want bag?’ Izzy said he felt like a celebrity, and everyone wanted a piece of him!

It was definitely time for bed, after such a long day. The hotel was only a 15minute walk from Silk Street, so after arriving, it was straight to bed, ready for our first tour day tomorrow!

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Photos

Deadly Tree
An Emperor hung himself here.