Beijing Day 1, Part I

I wanted to start posting about my trip with pictures but my brother took the camera with him to Baguio.  So my first post of my Beijing series will have to be picture-less. 

So as I said in my last post, I went on a 4 day 3 night trip to Beijing, China.  We got the tour through Sunhong travel agency at Nueva St. in Binondo, who got the tour from Panda.  Panda travel agency is supposed to be the main travel agency that does China tours and all the other agencies just group with them. 

The flight from Manila to Beijing was around 4-5 hours, can’t remember the exactly.  The plane was small and cramped, one of the most cramped flights I’ve been on. The setup of the seats were three seats on each side and around 35-40 rows of seats when there should have only been around 30.  There was very little leg room, even for me (4′11).  On top of the small plan, the flight was fully booked so we were all sitting elbow to elbow.  Well it didn’t really matter that it was cramped since I was sound asleep for most of the flight .

We got to Beijing around 11 or so and boy was I surprised.  The airport, the old one, didn’t look that old and the look was pretty modern.  We found our tour group which was composed of 3 groups.  Two groups would remain in Beijing only while the 3rd would go to Shanghai after four days.  There were three tour guides: Rose(I think was her name), Jason, and Frank.  Our group got Frank, who in my opinion was the best out of the three. 

Upon leaving the airport you could see that China was on the boom.  Here and there high-rise Condominiums were being built or were newly finished.  Many of these Condos looked pretty high end too.  I really didn’t expect Beijing to have that many high-rises.  Oh the streets, they were so wide and are lined with trees on both sides and the center island as well!  Some of the islands were so wide that they were used as parks. As my brother said it was much like Park Avenue, Manhattan.  Such a difference compared to here in the Philippines.  But similar to here, crossing the streets are somewhat difficult.

We went to eat lunch at this restaurant thats supposed to be well known, not sure.  It was around 5 floors and there were lots of pictures of Actors and Actresses that have eaten there.  The food was simple but satisfying, and this was the only restaurant that we got more than one cup of drinks other than tea.  The soup was flavorless though.  The restroom at the restaurant was nice, although there was only one stall with a toilet and the other two were squat style. 

After lunch we went to the Temple of Heaven…which I will talk about in my next post since I really should get back to work…^.^; hehe

Till then…(hopefully with pics)