June 2 Chonquing-Beijing

Well, here we are in Chongquing and it’s time to fly up to Beijing. Lots of hustle and bustle to get off the boat by 09:00. There’s something different every day around here, today we had to walk across a series of 12 pontoon boats to get to shore! Because we had an hour to kill, Charley arranged a brief walking tour of an 18th century Guild House. It was very interesting, as the locals have taken the original buildings from the 19th century and turned them into a museum of that time complete with dioramas, explanations, and of course a bit of shopping. Then we were off on a one-hour bus ride through Chongquing to the airport. This is the largest city in China at 33 million, and I assumed it would be a bit of a cesspit, but that’s simply not the case. It’s clean and big and well-organized, obviously very busy, there are cranes everywhere. (The joke you here everywhere in China: Q: What is the national bird of China? A: The crane - the common construction crane.) Then I realized what was so odd about this place; there are virtually no old buildings. In a 4,000 year old country virtually everything has been built in the last 20 years. Weird.

Seriously? They had a greeter on every pontoon boat! 

A teensy bit of Chongquing skyline from our ship.

Can’t build bridges fast enough? Double-deckers! 

Cool rooflines in the Guild Museum.

We were supposed to be on a 2pm flight, but Charley got us on the 12 o’clock! A gratifyingly routine flight put us back into Beijing airport in mid-afternoon, this airport is seriously freaking big. It has at least three runways, could be four. The terminals are in three rows between the runways with light rail connecting everything. We taxied for 17 minutes after landing! Now I can see why the main terminal looked so weird when we flew in the first night; the main terminal is built to look like a dragon. A mile-long dragon with a train up its butt….

 

I honestly didn’t know what to expect from Beijing. Would it be crowded, 'oriental', maybe dirty? I was surprised to find a clean modern city with great roads, lots of parks and trees and lakes, everything is well-organized and everything works. It's nice. We got to the hotel and were stunned at the quality. It has an enormous and beautiful lobby, lots of shops with VERY high-end jade and pottery, etc, two swimming pools, hot tubs, and an enormous spa. Our room is huge and very well appointed with great beds. The bathroom has a soaker tub and a nice glass shower stall, the whole room is marble floors and walls. RFID locks! 


The Hovel.

 There's no time to enjoy anything though, as Charley is loading us all back into a bus to go for dinner. It turns out that other than breakfast we're going to eat every lunch and dinner in a different place around the city. This one is great, and Charley says they'll all be the same style. Eight or ten people sit around a round table with a big lazy susan, the staff pile on 10-15 different dishes (mostly asian) plus soup and dessert, you get one beer or whatever for free, and there's unlimited free green tea. The food was excellent.

First dinner in Beijing, with friends from the ship.

Back at the hotel we gave up on exploring as we were dog-tired from a long day and tomorrow would come early.