We're in Beijing!

Quick! While my VPN says I'm in Hong Kong, not Beijing, here's what I wrote for Wednesday/Thursday.

October 24/25 (It was all one long day of travel.  I can’t separate them.)

Our flight from Chicago to Beijing was long (exceedingly long) but uneventful.  The plane was HUGE!!!  It was a Boeing 777 and we could have parked two of the plane we took from the Springs to Chicago inside the thing.  Probably about ¾ of the people on the flight were Chinese, as well as a couple of the flight staff.  We met up with the Poeppelmeir family at O’Hare.  Georgette, Rusty and their 3yr old daughter Jaiden (from Jianxi Province) are in our travel group.   

New Friends!!!

There ended up being an empty seat next to Lashi (by the window, even!), so Antigone got to sit next to him.  I was so grateful for that!  I sat between a very quiet young woman and a Chinese-Canadian man who talked to Lashi and I and gave us lots of advice and interesting perspective.  

This picture doesn't do it justice, but it's a flippin' huge plane!

Something cool about the plane: it was the first time I’ve been on a flight with individual on-demand TV, movies and games at every seat.  I read half of the book I bought myself for my birthday, Mark of Athena, but eventually I relented and watched Brave.  Good movie.  The screen also had a “map” setting, which would show various views of the trip – what we were currently flying over in local, regional, and hemispheric view.  It told us current outside temperature, altitude, ground speed, distance traveled, distance remaining, time traveled and time remaining.  That was nice to have, especially on such an interminably long flight.  

My little on-flight screen with the map just as we left Chicago

Really blurry, but you can see our awesome little plane icon coming down through Russia

We actually flew north from Chicago, up through upper Canada and northern Alaska, across the narrow part of the Bering Strait, through northern Russia, Manchuria and into China.  We did not fly over the Pacific Ocean, Japan, or Korea.  The scenery was gorgeous!

Russian Islands

Eastern Russian mountains.  Wow!

Through most of the flight, however, we were not permitted to have our window shades open because it was just too bright.  We chased the sun and it was never dark the whole trip.  We took off Wednesday at noon, and when we landed, it was Thursday afternoon.  We lost a whole day on a 13 hour flight. 

The Beijing airport is huge, but fairly easy to navigate after a flight, because you just follow the herd.  There was a train to get from the concourse to the baggage claim – much like DIA, but without the stupid-sounding music.  Customs was cake.  We just showed our entry card that we filled out on the plane, and walked through the “nothing to declare” line.  After collecting our bags, we went into the main part of the airport where dozens of people were waiting with signs.  We found George, our guide, with the CCAI sign, and waited about an hour for the third family in our group to arrive.  Then we boarded a bus for a 2 HOUR drive across Beijing to our hotel, the Qianmen Jianguo Hotel.  

Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to Beijing!

 

Antigone at the Beijing airport

Antigone crouched in a corner journaling.  :)  That's my girl!

Good Advice

One really big bowl

Traffic in Beijing is unbelievable.  Since the boom in the late 2000s, EVERYONE wants to own and drive a car.  I had to stop watching and close my eyes because cars, buses, bikes and pedestrians would jump through tiny spaces or merge in places that I never would dare.  How they do it (without a Borg-like connected conscious) I will never know.  All I know is, our driver Mr. Xia has mad skillz.

George, our awesome local Beijing guide

Once we got to the hotel, I was too tired to think about anything, but Antigone said she was hungry, so we crossed the street to a little restaurant and ordered 3 steamed buns filled with pork for $1.  It was just the right size dinner.  We trudged back across the street and crashed HARD.