Kerry and I survived a 13.5 hour flight to China: they gave us two meals and two snacks on the plane, but they kept it dark most of the time, which I didn't enjoy. Still, I got two watch two movies (Jackie and Snatched) and parts of other movies that I wanted to see again (Moonlight, Florence Foster Jenkins, and Gone with the Wind).
The Beijing Airport actually wasn't all that bad. We got through immigration and customs pretty easily, and there really weren't that many people in the airport. Our driver was there, on time. He was nice even though he didn't speak English. We noticed right away how CRAZY people drive here!! They stop in the middle of the street, frequently cut each other off, and cars and bikes don't seem to look for pedestrians at all. But our driver seemed to take this all in stride.
When we got to the hotel room at about 4 pm China time, we were warmly greeted with a glass of fruit tea. The bellhop took all of our luggage upstairs. No tipping! But we noticed one problem: none of the lights, nor the TV, seemed to work. We finally came to learn that the hotel key card has to be in a pocket on the inside of the door in order for the power to work. I wish somewhat had explained this to us! Kerry also had some issues figuring out how to use the converters as first, but he finally got things figured out.
I turned on the TV. The stations, of course, are almost all Chinese, but there are quite a few English stations as well (e.g. CNN, the Discovery Channel). Chinese commercials are crazy and colorful. And there was this one kids' show that looked like an LSD trip. :)
We had a splendiferous repast at the Beijing Bistro in the hotel: lots of seafood, including octopus, abelone, crawfish, and sushi. They even brought lobster to the table. We had to go ask for drinks ourselves, which was a bit different for us. Very yummy stuff! But afterwards we were exhausted and went to bed about 7 pm.
Here's some food from the first buffet we had--amazing!!
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