day 2 - getting to know Beijing - 18.08.08

Once at the airport, we had to get to the hotel somehow. Well should not be that hard right? We turned to the first hotel and travel information center we found and happily showed the hotel name. Well, apparently this was not where most of the tourists they have served have stayed at as first the lady told us that there is no such hotel :( oh uh. Finally she ended up calling somebody and then wrote down the hotel name and street name in Chinese for us. Before handing the paper to us she tried to sell us a car service for 450CNY (about 700EEK) saying that all the taxis are taken and the line is very long. My common sense did not want to accept that so we just walked away. Also it seemed suspicious go me of how she suddenly and magically just "found" the hotel, so i turned to the info center by the main lobby. Well they were certain that there is no such hotel :) they guided us to the next hotel service across the hall. Well ok, new try. Again the first thing they say is that this hotel does not exist, again some calls and again magically they happen to find it. And again they tried to sell the car service, their price was 400CNY, of course we did not take it :). I compared the two writings and they matched, hmm, must be fine then? We follow the signs to the taxi line and guess what :) there are 3 full lines of empty taxis of course.

Allright so we get to the cab and show the paper with the address, he looks at it for a loooong time then scratches his head and then looks at it again.. says something in Chinese and starts driving. Hmm :D we drive and we dive and he thinks we found the street. Well the name looks similar yes, we get to the right building number, but it is not a hotel. He gets out of the car to ask around, so that maybe the hotel is in the courtyard of something, but nope, no hotel there. The taxi driver drives around a bit and nope, nothing. uh oh - again :) finally he calls to the number shown at our reservation. Some Chinese talking follows - blablabla - and he starts driving again. Taxi meter shows 133CNY and it won't move. We guessed he has stopped it because he drove us to the wrong location? We drive some more and finally we get to a nice green hotel building that has a correct name on it :) yeah, seems that this was his mistake. Allright! We made it! And the hotel room is quite nice and also very clean - yay!

As it is only noon, we figured to shower and head over to get some sightseeing in today. At the front desk we get directions on how to find the famous Forbidden City. We get the bus numbers and stops written down in Chinese and in English and head out. We also got some information on the shops where we could find an adapter. Started to look for the store, can't find it. Were also thinking about getting a local sim.. could be useful... first we try to text with our phones just to see if it works - if it does, then we don't even need the local sim. We won't be using it much anyways. Finally we decide to head for the bus and deal with the rest later. First bus we get on should take us just for one stop, then we need to switch. Well once at the transition location, we ended up walking up and down the road for ever and ever and we could not find the other bus number on any of the stops :( We ask and they all talk to us in Chinese and show to the direction we have been to for many times already. Ugh. Finally it turned out that we needed to go down the street and then turn right at the end and then go on forever again. Ok so we get to the other bus as well. That one should take us 10 stops as the ticket lady so nicely instructed us. The distances between stops are very big, so it took quite a bit to pass those 10 stops. Finally we get out and we cross the road to enter the forbidden city... grrmm.. the gates closed 1h ago :( grrr. But oh well - nothing we can do about it anymore. Figured that we could start walking back and then try to find a place to eat. Not an easy task as we found out some time later. After some, perhaps 40m of walking we get back to the bus to head home. At the transition location we found a market - got some fruits for breakfast (very expensive mango's and not so expensive bananas). Being still hungry though, while looking for an eating place we passed by some places that served boiled chicken legs and heads - not very appertising :). On the next corner there was a nice eating place, looked quite new. The menu did not have one word in English, but it got nice colorful pictures. Our dinner ended up costing us both total of 54EEK (29CNY), it was good and tasty and big. This eating place was also close to our hotel - must remember the correct corner now :)

After eating it was straight to the hotel, got taxi ordered from the front desk for the next morning to take us to the triathlon event, quick internet visit, quick shower and then straight to bed.