Getting there - the flightpath

Time to catch up on the last 48 hours....

Stars in the ceiling for night effect

So, after the smoked salmon and champagne, our last luxury indulgence for a few weeks, we boarded our first Emirates flight to Dubai. Everything was as expected -good seats, good food, good service, great inflight entertainment (hundreds of films plus TV programmes, music and games). Apart from spilling a whole glass of vodka and orange juice down my leg (I'm pleased it was a 6 our flight to have time to dry out), the flight was uneventful. It did give me the chance to become reacquainted with the Pink Floyd Division Bell album.

The flight change in Dubai was very smooth and we boarded the 04:10 flight to Beijing 30 minutes after disembarking the flight from London - Emirates efficiency! No chance to see the duty free but we'll have time for that on the way back.

Ok, so onto the plane we were excited about, the A380. Great to see it parked outside the terminal. Disappointingly, once onboard it looked jut like the 777 we had just got off. You don't get the double decker effect on the inside :-(. But it does have great external visual impact.










We landed in Beijing airport on time  at the very modern Terminal 3 and were clearly identified as foreigners from the moment we hit immigration.

Following the advice given in our Lonely Planet guide we bought tickets for the Airport Express train and headed for the centre of Beijing armed with a map of the underground system and good idea of where our hotel was located.On leaving the Express we got an IC card (like an Oyster card) each and used the Metro to get near our hotel.

With the trains being airconditiomed the heat that hit us as we stepped onto the street was surprising. Thankfully it was only a 15 minute walk to the hotel, but even that left us dripping with sweat. The shower was really appreciated.

For dinner we walked to a nearby restaurant where we could sit outside to eat. Following a lot of arm gestures, facial expressions  and pointing at pictures we were happy to have ordered our first meal in China. We sat back enjoying the cold Jingyan beer and waited to see what we would get.

We never expected the table full of food that arrived. There was enough spicy chicken, spicy prawns, five spice beef. pork dumplings and fried rice to feed 6 or 7 people. The food tasted great. The spicy chicken was fried with enough hot chilli peppers to make your ears ache on the inside, but very tasty. After a couple more beers and unable to eat any more food we paid the bill (only £20 even at tourist rates) and crawled back for a good nights sleep.