Let me start by saying that the Great Wall was awesome! I mean absolutely, once-in-a-lifetime kind of incredible. But that being said, Beijing was by far the most frustrating city we've visited. Ok, well, maybe it wasn't that much more frustrating than Kuala Lumpur (but I guess you don't know about that, huh?), but we were there longer so it seemed like it.
We arrived at the Beijing Airport, went through immigration (long lines), got our baggage, went through customs, and made our way to the airport train that goes into town. One thing I've got to give Beijing is that it's cheap. It was less than $4 each for the train tickets from the airport, when some cities have been as much as $35. Anyway, first off, we get on the train and don't get seats. In pretty much every airport we've ever been to (and ridden the train from), if the train goes all the way to the airport, that's the end of the line. So usually, the train comes in, everyone on it gets off, and you have your pick of seats. Oh, and there's usually a place to set your luggage. Because after all, it's the stinking airport train. Not so in good old Beijing. Almost no one got off the train, and thus there were no seats. Additionally, there was nowhere to put our luggage, so we had to stand in front of the door area for the entire ride into town.
Upon arriving in Beijing, we navigated our way to another line in the subway system and made our way to the stop that was closest to our hotel, armed of course with printed directions we had found before leaving for the trip. When we got off the subway, we had a little trouble figuring out which direction to go, and unlike all of the other large cities in Asia we've visited over the past few months, no one around seemed to speak English. So we looked at our map and made our best guess, heading off in the direction we thought the hotel should be.
We made our way to a marked intersection to determine if we were in fact going the right way according to the map, but of course none of those streets were on our map. And we couldn't actually find the street names that were on the map. There was a little guard shack on the corner with a policeman inside, so we showed him our sheet, with the map in both English and Chinese on it. He spoke a little broken English (much better than our non-existent Chinese, of course) but didn't seem to know where the hotel was.
At this point a man riding a bike which appeared to be pulling a modern-day rickshaw pulled up and looked at the map. He tried to speak to Blake, but seeing that he spoke almost no English at all, we couldn't really understand him. While this was going on, the policeman had grabbed a fellow officer who chimed in. He spoke to the rickshaw guy in Chinese for a while, and then finally told us to ride with him because he knew where it was. They kept pointing back across the major street we had just crossed, back towards the subway station we had just left.
So we jumped in the back of the rickshaw, precariously balancing ourselves and our bags, and the guy took off. He went down the street we were on, away from the main street they'd been pointing at. He took a left onto the next through street, attempting to loop back around to a better spot to cross the main road behind us, and there was our hotel. Maybe a block and a half from the corner we had spent a good fifteen, puzzled minutes on, debating the location of the hotel 2 minutes away. We had to practically yell at him to get him to stop in front of the hotel because he was obviously taking us somewhere entirely different. He then proceeded to tell us we owed him 20 CNY for this block-and-a-half ride. Now, granted, 20 CNY is barely more than $3, but a cab has a minimum fare of 10 CNY and the meter most certainly would not have moved from 10 CNY by this point (a nice, air-conditioned cab, with a trunk, where we wouldn't have had to balance our 50lb suitcase on our laps). Not to mention, if he hadn't accidentally passed by our hotel, who knows where we would have ended up! So we gave him 6 CNY and sent him on his way to try to swindle some other unsuspecting Americans.
We checked into our hotel, which only just opened in March. It was a Crowne Plaza and a very good price, especially considering the quality. Did I mention Beijing is cheap? Anyway, I know Crowne Plaza's are not normally that fantastic - nice, but nothing to write home about - but this one was really nice. I'd say about on par with some of the Intercontinentals I've stayed at. Brand new, clean guest rooms with marble and granite bathrooms; plush carpet; soft, comfy bathrobes (my favorite) and slippers; pristine, white down comforters (also my favorite); and free wireless Internet. And, as part of their current opening special, free buffet breakfast.
Anyway, with the train being as slow as it was, and our trek to the hotel as time consuming as it was, by the time we got checked in and got our stuff settled, most of the major historic attractions were already closed. But we had written down a couple of noteworthy shopping/market streets, so we hit the subway again (which was actually pretty close now that we knew where we were) and headed to Qianmen Street, which conveniently was located off the Qianmen Station. We didn't have much information about this place, mind you, so we weren't really expecting much. This, by the way, is the best way NOT to be disappointed in Beijing.
Once I'd satisfied myself with picture-taking, we continued to wander around looking for the shopping street. With luck to which we should not have grown accustomed, we somehow managed to stumble onto it fairly easily. We bought our first bottled water (do NOT drink the tap water in China) and were pleased to find it only ran 3 CNY (less than 50 cents), even at this popular tourist (albeity mainly Chinese) attraction. This shopping street was very quaint and much more interesting than most that we've seen throughout Asia. Because instead of being a ritzy, too-rich-for-my-wallet, window-shopping-only designer avenue, Qianmen Street was mostly Chinese shops. It reminded me of the shops surrounding Yuyuan Garden in Shanghai. Sure, there were a few Western shops dotted here and there, with a Starbucks at one end and McDonald's at the other, but you got the feel that this place had been here long before McDonald's started serving those billion burgers (or whatever number they're at these days), even if it has obviously been reconstructed and reopened in recent years.
And it gave us a new experience as well - we saw the first kid pee in the street there. Yes, you read that right - you don't need to blink and rub your eyes or clean your glasses. Many of the toddlers in Beijing run around with slits in their pants, only pausing to pop a squat whenever they feel the urge. I think this little girl's parents were aiming for the drain nearby, but she missed by quite a bit and the downward slope of the street at this point didn't really help to contain her puddle. I guess parents of boys just have all the luck.
Anyway, by the time we made it all the way down the street and back, it was getting fairly late, and we were pretty hungry. Neither of us were really up to trying any of the restaurants with the whole-roasted ducks hanging in the windows (see the pics from my Hong Kong post) or the "interesting" noodle dish smells wafting into the street (not to mention, the urine running down the road didn't exactly up the appeal), so we headed back to our hotel.
Let me tell you about Hopfenstube. On the bottom floor of our hotel, near the connected entrance to a shopping mall, is a German restaurant and microbrewery. The restaurant, I believe, was independently opened about a year ago but is now run by the newly-opened Crown Plaza hotel. Their hops and their brewmaster hail from Germany, and the copper kettles and stainless steel firmenters used to brew their own First Carl lager, amber, wheat, and dark beers are proudly displayed strategically amidst restaurant seating. And their potato soup was delicious! Actually, all of the food was pretty good (we ate there repeatedly), and Blake really enjoyed the beer, which he sampled each night of our trip (though as usual the wheat was his favorite). But that potato soup... Wow. It was just the right amount of creamy, just the right amount of bacon, and reminded me of the soup we had at the restaurant in our little hotel in Innsbruck, Austria, which was truly one of the best meals we had in Europe.
Anyway, it really hit the spot, and we hit the sack somewhat early, preparing for a long day coming, trucking around the huge city of Beijing. Although, truthfully, we had no idea...
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