Our 10-hour flight to Beijing was a bit of an endurance test, we were very crammed in with not much personal space. I managed to doze on and off, but poor Adam didn’t sleep for a single minute. On the bright side, the airline fed us surprisingly well, we were treated to some genuinely tasty beef noodles followed by Häagen-Dazs ice cream, and Adam managed to binge a impressive chunk of the in-flight movie catalog. As we began our descent, the screens switched to an instructional stretch video designed to boost in-flight circulation. The arm stretches were a pleasant for my aching muscles, though I remain skeptical about the part where stroking my back was supposed to restore my spleen health. To be fair, sitting wedged in economy meant I couldn’t actually reach most of my back anyway… otherwise, I’m sure I’d have a absolute tip-top spleen right now.
Once on the ground, we hopped into a taxi toward central Beijing. We spent the first leg cruising down a massive seven-lane highway that felt slick, modern, and entirely nondescript. But then our driver swerved into a narrow side alley that felt much more historic and Chinese. The alley was barely wider than a single car, yet somehow it was bustling with two-way traffic as we squeezed within inches of passing mopeds and pedestrians. Eventually, we pulled up to our home base, which boasts the short, sweet, and understated name: ‘Happy Dragon Imperial Garden Courtyard Beijing Forbidden City Newly Renovated Fluent English Speaking Hotel’. What it lacked in brevity, it more than made up for in sheer charm! It turned out to be a gorgeous little oasis complete with a serene central garden and a koi pond.
After dropping our bags and showering, Adam’s 10-hour sleep deprivation finally caught up with him, and he completely crashed out at 5:00 PM. Thanks to my plane naps, I managed to hang on a bit longer. When hunger struck, I didn’t have to venture far past the hotel’s round courtyard door before my nose led me straight into a local restaurant. To my relief, they had an English menu, and I ordered a steaming, delicious bowl of beef noodle soup.
Then came the moment of truth, making my very first payment with Alipay. Since China runs almost entirely on payment apps, with cash and physical cards being practically mythical outside of major hotels, tapping “Pay” was a little nerve-wracking, it would be a difficult trip if it didn’t work. Luckily, the green checkmark flashed, my payment went through, and I headed back to the room full, triumphant, and ready to crash out myself around 9:00 PM.
After a thoroughly jet-lagged and restless night for both of us, we surfaced around 9:00 AM and headed down to breakfast. The spread was huge, and we immediately set to work trying all the local dishes and fruits. My favorite was a pillowy, pork-filled steamed bread dumpling.
Fueled up, we were raring to head out and explore right after breakfast, but tech trouble had other plans. We discovered we’d downloaded the wrong version of DiDi (China’s answer to Uber), you need a special version of the app for China and we’d downloaded the generic one used in the rest of Asia. As it turns out, trying to set this up and link a non-Chinese phone number *after* you’ve already entered the country is a special kind of administrative puzzle. After a few hours of frantic phone-faffing, we gave up and decided to walk, although the hotel kindly have us a free took took style lift to the main road. Before we began the 45min walk to our next hotel with our rucksacks on our backs, poor Adam is getting the full backpacker experience after all! At least we got to see a bit of Beijing on the way.
We arrived slightly sweaty to our next hotel, where we took a moment to rest and consult the map, only to realize of just how mind-bogglingly huge Beijing actually is. With taxis not an option and most of the major attractions requiring several hours of walking to reach, we decided to explore Jingshan Park right on our doorstep instead. After paying the grand total of 45p entrance fee for the both of us, we spent a lovely, relaxed afternoon meandering through the lush gardens and poking around all the beautiful ancient buildings.
At one point there was a big crowd gathering around something taking pictures and after seeing all the beautiful surroundings we wondered what had caused such a fuss, but after fighting our way to the front, we found it was just a ordinary, although very cute, ginger cat.
After our walk we headed back to the hotel for our welcome meeting for the tour and met the other travellers, half from the UK and half from Australia and all retired apart from us and one other guy. So far they all seem lovely, so hopefully it should be a fun 18 days.
Our guide, Michael, took the whole group out for a welcome feast at a Peking duck restaurant, because when in Rome, right? The duck and every single dish he ordered were absolutely banging, though to be fair, we’ve yet to encounter a single bite in this city that isn’t bursting with flavor.
The duck, however, was the undisputed star of the show: beautifully crispy skin, amazingly tender meat, and to top it off, after carving away every possible slice, they deep-fried the remaining meat and bones into a whole new level of deliciousness. I love duck pancakes normally but these were the best of the best and we got to try the local tips too, such as dipping the crispy skin in sugar and having a sweet jelly at the end.
We practically had to waddle all the way back to the hotel, completely stuffed. Honestly, it’s a very good thing this tour involves a ton of walking, otherwise they might have to roll us onto the plane home!
But the real fun starts with the tour tomorrow, I’ll tell you all about it soon,
Love, Alice x