Our first impression of Beijing: either it was very foggy or very smoggy or both. It was hard to tell but the visibility was really low. The airport was really something because we had been told how quiet it was in the airport and it really is. Not sure why but even though there's a ton of people, everyone is being really quiet. So even standing in customs, you could hear the roar of a water fountain off in the distance. Luckily we got through customs without incident. And then we both got a chance for our first Chinese bathroom experience. We were pleasantly surprised to see normal toilets and tp, but this could be because its an airport and therefore pretty Westernized.
We came out of the baggage claim and weren't for sure who we were looking for to meet us. Luckily, it didn't take long to find our guide holding a sign for us. His name was Justin (we later found out he picked than name because he loved New Kids on the Block and liked Justin Timberlake) and was a SUPER nice. He works with our travel agency. He called his friend "Mr. Fey" to come and meet us with his car. We were both laughing under our breath at that name because we call our cat Fiona "Fey" for short so we liked that his name was "Mr. Fey". It took us about 40 minutes to get from the airport outside of Beijing to our hotel in the middle of the city. On the drive, Justin had a lot of questions for us about the United States and even though he had never been, knew a lot of information about our country which he said he learned a lot from movies. He was curious how our economy was doing and what places we a visited. He was very interested in New York City.
We got to our hotel, the Beijing Novetel Peace Hotel, which we learned is French owned but is on a very nice street that Justin compared to 5th avenue in NYC. Definitely has some nice stores and restaurants but it reminded us more of Chinatown in Washington DC. The hotel staff was very nice and got us all checked in and also gave us out Panda phone which is our in country cell phone we rented for use while we are here. The hotel is pretty large with a nice buffet restaurant, pool (no hot tub :( ) and a place to exchange your money. After putting out bags in the room, our exhaustion was hitting us pretty hard. We didn't want to sleep yet though to help get us on China's schedule, so we headed back out to the hotel buffet for dinner. It was VERY good. Plenty of Chinese and american dishes we could choose from. There was even a sushi bar.
One thing we don't have a feel for yet is the currency. Like our dinner was 365 yuan. We had no idea how much that was. We later learned it was $60. Bobby is going to make a currency conversion cheat sheet to use while we are out so that we don't over spend on something. Tomorrow we head to the Great Wall and it will be one day closer to getting Mila!!!
