The city that really never sleeps...

August 27th 2017

Most people normally think of New York as being the city that never sleeps; i can assure you, it's actually Beijing!

We arrived on Hainan Airways flight from Manchester into Beijing International Airport at 4.30am on Sunday morning. I was expecting the airport to be reasonably quiet at that time but I was in for a huge surprise. A mere 2 hours later and we were bartering with a taxi driver to take us to our hotel; it appears they all refuse to turn on the meter so bartering is a must!

After a 30 minute journey costing 200RMB (about £23), we arrived at our hotel (Howard Johnson Paragon Hotel) a little terrified; apparently driving in one lane and within the speed limit is not the done thing! It also started to pour rain so we were hoping we would be able to check-in and have a shower to revitalise ourselves; that was not to be! 

It was now 7am and there was a monsoon outside; we decided to go for a "wander." We ventured around the front of the hotel and found a supermarket where we bought some random Chinese biscuits, a pepsi and the coolest looking red-bull I have ever seen. Our venture lasted about 20 mins before we returned to the hotel with wet feet and a little worse for wear. 




After a few more hours in the hotel, snoozing, reading, snoozing, getting told to move from the "business" area (from the only grumpy Chinese person me have met), snoozing, reading, we were allowed to check-in at 10am. It was straight to sleep as we had been up for over 24 hours and had the prospect of a tour to look forward to at 2pm.

Until then.....night night!





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anniversary Holiday

Image
Every year, around December 8th, I look to see what we can do or where we can go to celebrate "surviving" another year of marriage.   Over the last few years, we've been back to our wedding venue for an overnight stay, had an all-inclusive holiday in Ras al Khaimah in the UAE, visited New Orleans and had a Michelin tasting menu at The Kitchin in Leith. This year, we decided to stick with Europe and head to Riga, the capital of Latvia. Back in April 2020, we were supposed to visit Riga, but the trip was cancelled due to Covid. I'm not sure why its taken us so long for us to rebook, but the prospect of a traditional Christmas market and some Glühwein convinced us. We flew Ryanair from Edinburgh to Riga on Sunday 3rd December; the flight was 2 hours late, but thankfully we had paid for a lounge so we weren't too bothered. I had pre-booked a taxi on arrival and was delighted given the delay; the journey was only 15 minutes, but it was midnight and -10 when we arrived ...
Read more

Bucharest & Dracula

Image
This is another one of these holidays that we had booked in 2020, for my birthday to be precise. It's only now, April 2024, that we managed to rebook and make our way to the Capital, Bucharest and the mountains and countryside of Transylvania. It was the usual deal, British Airways via London using a companion voucher and Avios to upgrade to business class; I'm pretty sure the flights cost us £2. The flight to London was early, and it was absolutely beautiful coming into London; we had fabulous views of the city.  We arrived in Romania late afternoon, and had a taxi waiting to take us to the hotel. I had booked The Mansion Boutique Hotel, a 4 star hotel in the centre of the pedestrian district; we had to be let off by the side of the cobbled streets but thankfully it was only a 2 minute walk. Check-in was great, we got a glass of fizz each and taken to our room which was called "Zen". We actually didn't have too long, so unpacked quickly and made our way out of th...
Read more

366 Steps with a Hangover!

Image
Surprisingly, we weren’t feeling quite so fresh this morning. We decided to delay breakfast and go straight to the Belfry of Bruges, a medieval bell tower. There are 366 steps which lead you to the top of the 83 metre high building. Normally, this would be fine but with the cold and a hangover, I was not feeling the best. The spiral staircase is very steep at the top so they only allow 50 people up at a time; we had to wait at the bottom for a few minutes which was a bit of an inconvenience, but now I understand why they have these restrictions. We made it to the top and only had a 10 minute wait until 11am which would signal a lot of bells chiming. I’m sure you can imagine how my head was feeling at the end of it! After descending the tower, we headed to the Church of our Lady Bruges as there is a Michelangelo sculpture located there. Unfortunately, you had to buy a museum ticket in order to see it so we decided it wasn’t worth it. Instead, we went for lunch at a very quaint tea room....
Read more