We woke up at 3:45am which gave Daniela the chance to watch
some of the opening game from the World Cup in Brazil. She was excited about the idea because the
World Cup is being held in South America more than anything else. The game was
going to start at 4am but she had some difficulty finding the channel that was
going to show it. It is a fair thing to guess it would be one of the sports
channels but after she gave up all dejected I was able to find it in the
regular channels. The game was Brazil vs Croatia. By the time we were watching
Brazil had already scored an own goal which was bizarre to see Croatia leading
but then as I was getting showered Brazil scored the tying goal and we had to
leave by the end of the half where it was still tied. We both got cleaned up
and finished packing up the tiny bits that needed to be done then headed
straight downstairs where we were easily able to pick up a taxi to the airport
from the front lobby. It appears that by 5am there are already taxis waiting. The ride to the airport didn’t have any
traffic really so we got there in maybe 35 minutes. We found the check in desk
for Hong Kong airlines. There were a couple people in line but the process was
quick and easy all the same. One Chinese woman tried to push past us with her
family in the line but we didn’t let her. I cannot fathom any reason she had to
go ahead of us. Too bad for her.
We decided to check security which was also quick and easy
then head in to the main area to find food. I got a sausage McMuffin from McDonalds
along with a hash brown and coffee. This
allowed me to buy her a World Cup Hello Kitty referee doll. The put milk in the
coffee unfortunately. Daniela got her breakfast of fruit and a veggie filled
bagel from Panopolis next door. I trade my coffee to her and got an iced coffee
from them that was black. I also got a
marble cake. We finished eating then had
to take a train to the gate area we needed and arrived maybe a few minutes
before boarding. The boarding was general and the line was huge but like in
Japan there was almost no carry-on luggage so the line moved fast.
The plane was an Airbus 330 and had in seat entertainment.
When the flight took off I chose to watch Mr. Peabody and Sherman and somewhat
enjoyed it. It had a few nods to the original show while probably being a touch
more modernized than I expected with slang type stuff. I guess also the butt
jokes were a bit weak but to be expected. If you were thinking of watching it I
would say go ahead it won’t kill you.
The flight otherwise was uneventful. They served a breakfast that had
scrambled eggs but I didn’t even open the hot food section and only had the
fruit and bread and some of the nastiest coffee I had ever seen. The bottle cup
thing of water was partially frozen.
After we landed I had expected a horror show through
immigration but most of the flight was Chinese nationals (mainlanders) and they
had their gigantic lines but we foreigners had only one line but there was not
many people in it. The guy scrutinized our passports both but not for long and
we both got through without issue. Then
we moved on to the baggage claim and the bag was there already (probably
because I had to stop to pee along the way to getting to immigration) and we
almost rolled through customs but they paused and talked to Daniela about where
she was from and if she was with me before letting her go. I think they
racially profiled her. It took us a few
minutes to find an ATM that worked then we talked to an information person and
tried to find a cab.
The cab is where things got bad. Not horrible bad but sad
bad. I handed the reservations page to
the driver and he said he was not sure where it was. This really set off Daniela because she
didn’t like that he was dressed in regular clothes much like in Lima. There is no meter here so that also works on
negotiated rates as well. So he called
up someone and spoke to them and they gave him some information in Chinese and
he guessed and couldn’t find the place. It was supposed to be a Sheraton Four
Points. He eventually pulled us over and said he we were there but we obviously
weren’t so he tried to call some more. The person on the other end wasn’t much
helpful. Then Daniela saw a policeman
who said the station was around the corner so she and the drive went to the
police station and they found out we were on the wrong side of the city to the
Sheraton Four Points. We started to go there and ended up finding another cab
driver was aware of where to go and swapped off at the request of the first
driver. We only gave him half the rate
we were expecting and he left us with the new guy. We sat through traffic
forever to get to the other side of the city but he did indeed drive us to a
Sheraton Four Points.
We got to the front desk and were told they didn’t have
reservations for us. The reservations from my page were for a different
Sheraton Four Points in a far off city. I am not sure why the company booking
page had done this too me I set to Beijing and close to the city center. In any event this place was also really in
the middle of nowhere so we called the Sheraton Great Wall and set up
reservations there. I will not be able
to explain in detail all of the exasperation Daniela was feeling during this
process and it did point out to both of us that we both did things against our
gut instincts (I booking through our company website instead of my normal
channels or the actual travel agency people and Daniela for getting into the
first cab in the first place). In any event
we managed to get another cab to drive us through hideous traffic back to the
Sheraton Great Wall which we had passed a couple times in our travels through
the city. The traffic made a half hour drive take an hour and thirty minutes
instead. I had to cancel the other booking still. I did that on the phone with
the company’s emergency hotline for travel. The lady was very pleasant and the
process quick.
We got to the hotel and checked in to room 1628. The hotel
is maybe a little bit old but still it is reasonably clean and the room is a
decent size. I took picture and gave
Daniela only a few minutes to relax before we headed downstairs and booked our
tour to the Great Wall for Saturday. We
then chose the Italian restaurant and ate. It was almost dinner time from
missing lunch with all the time in the taxis. Daniela ordered some Quesedillas
first. I had a lasagna and Daniela had a chicken piccata which was not quite a
chicken piccata. We got a bottle of New
Zealand Cabernet Merlot. The food was
reasonably good. We relaxed for a while
then when we settled up. We headed
outside and across to the Landmark building for a few minutes then found the
area that appears to be now unused behind the Sheraton and wandered around for
a while before heading into the room to call it an early night. I at the least
was beyond exhausted and Daniela was tired too.
The pictures from China day 1 are found here.
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