Zalman on the Go!: China

Travel was pretty easy. We had booked an aisle and window seat and the center seat was never sold so we had a little room to stretch out. In Melanies case that meant she could actually sleep fo several hours on her stomach(with her husband funtioning as human footrest).

We arrived at terminal 3 which seemed big to us but i guess predates the olympics. We seemed to be the only flight arriving at the time so it was a bit eiry how empty it seemed as we landed we could already see the haze which shrouded Beijing. Reminded me of mornings is El Paso when the smelter was still running. we had to be under 1000 ft to be able to see the ground although there were no clouds.

Anyway, with no checked bags we made it easily through passport control, were politely waived to the "nothing to declare line" and out to reception where our guide "Bambo" was waiting for us. 86 degrees and 80 % humidity made it feel just like home except there was no sighn of recent rain and the yellow haze blurred the details of all the buildings. Bambo walked us to the car where "Mike" drove us the 1 hr to the hotel in L.I.E. rush hour like traffic. (being a Sat. The traffic was apparantly quite light for the S12Airport Expressway.). While i could identify many of the vehichles, it was clear that Detroit and Japan have no lock on the auto industry in China. Going to have to do a little research on the trees along the the roads. There is something that looks like an aspen along with a variety of fir trees.

After checking in at the Crown Plazza we took off downd the main drag to (one of )the 5th Avenues of Bejing where we experienced getting iur eyes treated for the bags under them by agressive saleswoman, checked out a couple deaprtment stores, a music instrument store, a pharmacy complete with attendents in nurses caps with all sorts of drugs, medical equipment along with dried seahorses, spiders, worms and other "naturals of unknown origin.

We skipped the ralh lauren, versace and other chain stores but Melanie did find a couple of booths with shoes of her size to try on. lots of sign language-very little English.

Early this morning David went out for a walk. Streets were quietbut by no means empty.

Street on side of hotel leading onto the shopping street. It is 6 am and you can see the imfamous Beijing haze.

Street on entrance of hotel. In a few hours it will be crowed a noisey.

Breakfast - first course fried noodles , egg, sweet roll, rice congee, wonton soup without wontons (somehow got translated to rice noodle) Melanie has fallen in love with congee.