This is the first time flying Air China and I have to say, for a short 3hrs and 20mins flight, I left with a pretty good impression of Air China. During the short flight, we were served a.. snack? but I think it was lunch. Me, who gets sick off of plane food, obviously didn't eat any but it was still nice for them to serve food during such a short flight. They also handed out mini Haagen Daz ice cream. Not only that, but the plane we were on was clean and spacious, even for economy. It might be the fact that the plane was only half full.. since I didn't have anyone next to me or in the two middle rows next to me.
I arrived 15 minutes before Amar's scheduled time to land but his flight was delayed so I waited for him after passing customs at the baggage claim. Beijing Capital International Airport did not disappoint (I would imagine it to be pretty nice since it is the capital). Even though baggage claims was indoors, I felt the freezing cold breeze seeping in from outside. It was extremely cold.
After Amar finally landed (1hr and 30mins) past his scheduled time and grabbed his luggage, we headed straight out to get a taxi from the taxi stand to our hotel. We stayed in Beijing for four full days, with two days at Holiday Inn, Downtown location and the next two at Marriott, Beijing Northeast.
Beijing is a HUGE city that has a very strange layout.
It has six rings within the city. The main attractions such as Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square are located within the first ring and then more in the second ring, etc. Holiday Inn is located within the first ring on the left side of Forbidden City in the older town center and Marriott is located in the third ring on with Olympic Sites as the nearest attraction.
Everything is within reach (kind of; except for Summer Palace and the Great Wall) via the Subway. It is a bit hard to navigate as the names of places are so similar. We checked into the hotel and the room was so small (the pictures make the room look a lot bigger..) but it was comfortable and a far better choice than other hotels in the area. The heater however was on blast and we were being cooked alive even though the outside temperature was -4°. We ended up having to open our only window to its fullest to make it bearable.
Amar was jet-lagged and so he went to sleep right away while I did some research on where we were going tomorrow! I had to wake him up a little later to get food since we both haven't had any food yet-- mainly because I was hungry. We ended up getting the only thing open and within reach-- KFC (despite the whole chicken fiasco.. we're still fine! So I guess it was okay.)
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