I'm awake now

Well, as Lori said in her last update, we arrived safely in Beijing after the most incredible flight I have ever been on.

We left Toronto on Friday in the morning, nice and sunny and light. We landed in Chicago in the same kind of weather.

In the early afternoon, our flight left Chicago for Beijing. When we boarded the plane, all the shades were pulled down and that was kind of strange to me because I love to look out the window and see what is passing beneath us, if we can.

As the plane took off and the captain announced our flight path, I realized, we are going to be in daylight and sunshine until the Saturday night, after we arrive in Beijing.

The flight went as normal until the most amazing sight happened. Out the window, we could see ice floes in the Arctic Ocean as we made our way through the Northwest Territories, out over the Ocean and through Alaska and on into Siberia.

It was amazing watching the scenery switch from ice floes to barren Siberian Tundra, absolute beauty of a kind I had never seen before.

When we landed in Beijing, the airport was awesome. It is huge an there are signs everywhere in Chinese and English.

Once we cleared Customs, we had to take a train to another terminal to collect our baggage. Once we had baggage in hand, we were finally able to go outside for a cigarette. It's amazing, in a country full of smokers, you can not smoke in the new buildings. I was impressed with this, but it did make me more anxious for a cigarette. I didn't really want one until we were on the ground in Beijing 13 1/2 hours after leaving Chicago.

We managed to find the taxi rank, after a cigarette or two, and had to queue up for our taxi.

The taxi ride was a little long but interesting. On our way to our guesthouse, we passed the Olympic site (very far off in the distance) and were able to see the National Stadium (Birds Nest), the torch and the Media Pagoda.

We are staying off the beaten path, which in our opinion is great.

The area we are staying in is a fascinating area in the west of Beijing close the Olympic Baseball Stadiums.

We get to witness everyday Beijingers going about their everyday life.

Once we were checked in to the guesthouse, we decided to explore our neighbourhood a little. After our little tour, we decided to head back to the guesthouse and have some dinner in the restaurant.

The restaurant is in a little courtyard and has these amazing coverings over the open door that remind me of the long thing strings of licorice I used to eat when I was a kid, we now refer to this door as the licorice door. At times it can be very challenging to navigate as the licorice will get all tangled at the bottom and you don't see it until you spread the licorice and try to walk through, only to be caught in a tangle of licorice. As this has happened a few times, Lori and I think that they do it on purpose just laugh at the silly westerners.

Everyone in the restaurant is amazingly friendly.

They sat us at our table with our menu and as Lori and I were looking at the pictures of food and the English names, a little 10 year old girl came over said 'what do you like', of course, my reply was pancakes (Chinese pancakes with spring onion and garlic, fried and very very good). She giggled and went back to her mother at the next table. She kept coming back to us and speaking to us in English and laughing and giggling and dancing around. She told me her name was Lili and asked me what my name was (Lori thinks this was her pick up line) so I said, my name is Paul. It took her a few tries and she finally got it.

Lili was as sweet as you could imagine and little girl to be and so full of energy. Her mother was equally as nice and, at seeing our please willingness to interact with Lili, encouraged her daughter to ask us more questions. When Lili and her mother left the restaurant, they wished us a good night in English and Chinese.

On Sunday we went to pick up our tickets at the will call window for two of our events, but lo and behold, befuddled Paul forgot to bring all the correct information. So, after walking around the outside perimeter of Tian 'an men Square (from the opposite side of the street) we decided to head back to the guest house, go to an internet cafe and find the directions in my email (we didn't have an internet connection in the room at this point).

Off we went to the internet cafe we had spotted when touring our neighbourhood the day before.

After waiting for a Dutch guy to finish his one fingered emails and uploading photos, we were finally free to get the directions to where the will call window was. Back on the subway we go.

We took the subway further than we had been earlier and followed the directions to a 20 building complex of highrises that Jan Wong wrote about in Beijing Confidential, we had to go to the SOHO complex.

The Beijing subway is a fascinating place. Each of the new cars has these electronic subway maps of the line you are traveling on and the light indicators turn red as you pass a station. 

Lori and I were standing in the subway, there is no way to get a seat, and at this one stop a man, his wife and their baby got on, the baby was so cute and adorable. The man was holding his son and some nice gentleman stood up to give him a seat. As he sat down the baby started looking around and playing with a lady's purse who was sitting beside them. After a little while, the baby started looking around the subway and turned, as he turned he spread his legs and out fell everything he owned (peepee and testicles) through a slit in his pants. Thanks to Jan Wong (Red China Blues) this bit of culture shock made me laugh instead of being mortified as I would have been in Toronto. Thanks to Jan Wong, and Laura for lending me the books, my shock was non-existent.

Off we went to SOHO and found our will call window. Once inside, the guy was helping an Australian and then turned to us and asked for our confirmations. Being anal, I pulled out my portfolio for the trip, went to the folder for the will call window, pulled out my papers with my confirmation numbers highlighted for the events that I was picking up tickets for. The guy turns to this Australian gal and says to her, with a sense of relief 'you see, this is what you need, your confirmation number. I can't read your confirmation number and that is why I can't find your tickets'.

The guy brings us our tickets and very proudly pulls out the closing ceremony tickets and explains that they are green for the jade of China. Then he hands over the other set of tickets for the decathelon and asks us to check them to make sure they are accurate. 

What a great sense of completion in planning the trip. We now have all the tickets for our events.

We then wandered around SOHO for a bit and found this cool little coffee shop and had some coffee, there was no plain coffee, it all came with alcohol in it. Very good and very relaxing. There is nothing better than sitting in a restaurant/coffee shop drinking a coffee and having a cigarette.

Off we went to the CBD (Central Business District) to see the amazing architecture of high rise buildings. But wait, I had to stop, here I was in Beijing, China and I was stopped by a Cartier store, then Dolce and Gabana, Armani and Louis Vuitton. A very nice surprise. I felt like I was at home.

After some walking around, navigating the streets, crossing the road in Beijing can be an extreme sport, unless you put yourself into the middle of a crowd of locals. The taxis, busses, cars and the worst of all, bicycles are all mad drivers here. It is amazing.

Back to the guest house for a quiet dinner and off to bed, still feeling done in by the jetlag.

Going to dinner, of course, the licorice door got me again, almost tripping me, I think the staff do it just to laugh at me because they know I will never be able to properly navigate the door.

Monday brought a whole new day and I will leave that update to Lori.