Oct 13 Mon. Chuck works and I play

Today is the day that Chuck's class starts. He is teaching from 7:15 to 9 pm Monday through Thursday for 2 weeks. That does mean that we will be eating early at our hotel 4 nights a week.

It also means that he wants to spend the afternoon going over his notes and (I think) chatting with the physicists.

He was a little surprised today when I said that I would not be eating dinner with him. My friend Wendy from my aerobics group is on a China tour and this is the afternoon that she has free.

We made the plan by phone. She had spelled the name of her hotel for me. (Her tour guide said that it was too far and would cost too much to take a taxi. He was Chinese and had a different idea of cost than we do.) I asked another guest in my hotel to talk to the guide and get the name of the hotel in Chinese for the taxi driver. (Just plucked this guy out of the lobby!) My translator said that the guide said that all the taxi drivers knew this hotel. Not being a trusting soul, I looked it up on the internet and found the phone number, just in case.

It only took 20 minutes, so was really pretty close by Beijing standards. The taxi driver DID know how to get there and Wendy and I met up in the lobby right on time.

When we were planning this in L. A., we had talked about going to the really fancy hotel that was built near the Olympics site for a drink. (It is the one with the big screen TV on the side.) So first we went to the Olympics site and walked around and had our picture taken to prove that we were there.

Then we hiked over to the big building. It wasn't open yet. Only the large TV is working. The big building is the Dragon's head and isn't the hotel. I think it will be apartments and offices. The next 3 buildings are the body. They will be a really really really high end shopping mall. We walked along and came to a sign that said we could go up to the 5th floor and take pictures. I love the serendipity moments like this. Up we went. We were on the big screen TV level, which on these buildings is the top.

So here are the Olympics buildings from afar. The reason that they look a little gray is because the smog was absolutely dreadful.


These small buildings carry the dragon head motif.
Considering that we came up an escalator through a construction zone (with guards at every level) they had fixed up the terrace very nicely. Unfortunately, no drinks were offered at these lovely tables.
We walked some more and finally came to the 4th building, which is the dragon's tail and the hotel. That, too, is not open yet. It seems to be very close. The lobby was lovely, but still being painted. When we looked back the way we had come, you can get an idea of the vastness of this place.


The guard at the hotel door went and got us a brochure. It was in Chinese, but had nice pictures so we thanked him and started on our way. He came running after us with the English version.

Wendy and I took a cab back to her hotel and went to a tea shop for tea. Walked around the area and looked in the shops and then stopped at a Sichuan restaurant for dinner. We were so busy talking that I forgot to take pictures of the food. We had ribs with 5 spices, mushrooms, snow peas with garlic and watermelon for dessert. The picture of the ribs had a plate with 5 of them. The waitress asked how many we wanted. They looked small in the picture, so we said 4. No, she didn't think that was a good idea. 2 was a good number - she was right, they were huge.

I took a taxi back to my hotel (another 20 minutes) and was home way before Chuck got back from his class. He said that it went very well and that the students asked lots of questions.