June 9th and 10th - Kelowna to Beijing

I left my condo at 5:30 to head to the airport for my 7 a.m. flight to Vancouver.  Once there I had 4 hours to kill because I was flying on points.  Randy and Gillian had a later flight so I met them at the gate about 11 a.m.  Our 11-hour flight to Beijing was full but it was a great flight - very smooth and quiet, and even I managed to get a fair amount of sleep.

We arrived in Beijing on time and caught a taxi to our hotel.  We allowed ourselves a few minutes to settle in (but not long enough to sit or lay down) and by 4 we were out exploring our surroundings.  We walked and toured around for several hours and then decided to have dinner before heading back to the hotel.  We are in a business retail area with lots of small shops and big stores, everything from KFC, Starbucks and McDonalds to formal restaurants, from 7-11 type stores to big grocery stores, and from  small electronic stores to huge department stores and shopping centres, all with the usual banks and office buildings mixed in.  The bigger, fancier stores were on the main street and the smaller, less formal stores were on the side and back streets.  It looked just like any big city.  

We ate at a pub/restaurant in a local mall.  It cost 12 yuan ($2.50) for for a big bottle of beer and the total bill including beer was 135 yuan or $27.  The staff was great.  No one spoke any English and their menus were all in Chinese but they had their various electronic devices out trying to translate for us.   Finally a customer came over and helped us order a variety of dishes to try.  We still have no idea what some of it really was but, except for one dish, it was good.  None of us really liked the noodles dish with a still unidentified dark powdery sauce on it.  Overall it was an enjoyable cultural experience.

We walked back to the hotel and were all in bed around 10 p.m. and up the next day early and never had any sign of jet lag throughout the coming days.  It was a great start to an incredible journey.