Today we travel from Xi’an to Beijing for our last night in China. It has been a great trip, but also tiring with the long days and early morning starts.
We had to be in the lobby today at 6:15 AM, so we set an alarm for 5:00 AM this morning to give us time to get ready and eat a hurried breakfast at the hotel buffet. The buffet is supposed to open at 6:00 AM, but Michael told us that he had gone at 5:45 AM yesterday just to check to see if it was open that early to help us today, and he said it had been open that early, but not everything they serve was out and ready yet.
We arrived at the buffet right at 5:45 AM, and it was open. We were not looking to have everything they served, just some basics, eggs, yogurt and bread/pastries. I ordered a coffee and Stephanie brought her diet Coke we bought from the grocery store yesterday. Diet sodas are not very prominent in China, especially at any of the hotel restaurants. Some had them, but not many, and they are hard to find in the stores.
We finished eating in about 10 minutes and headed back to the room to get our carry-on luggage and make one last pit stop. We headed down to the lobby and it was completely empty except for one person. A couple of minutes later, Suzie and Michael arrived but that was everyone, not even our guide Michael was there yet, and it was 6:15 AM, something was amiss. The four of us remembered the time being 6:15 AM, but apparently it was not. Several people from one of the ether groups arrived, and they said their meeting time was 6:20 AM.
Around 6:30 AM, Michael showed up and claimed he had said 6:30 AM all along. However, Suzie and Michael had talked to a couple of other people in our group who also remembered 6:15 AM, but they were not here yet either, maybe they had confirmed the time this morning with Michael at breakfast and found out it was different. Some other people in our group said 6:30 AM was the time. We do know that many in our group had gone to the dinner show last night and maybe the time was given differently during the ride back to the hotel. We never knew what happened, but that extra 15 minutes would have made for a more relaxed breakfast.
Our bus showed up right at 6:30 AM and our group boarded for the ride to the airport, which was about 50 minutes. We were not going to have to check in at the gate, and our luggage was also being checked in before we got there, so that made it easy. Michael already had all of our passports and was going to get our boarding passes from the airline once we arrived. Of course, that meant we had no say in our seating locations, so it was sort of potluck on our being seated together. Michael did say he had requested seats together, and that “95% would be together”, so we would have to wait and see how that worked out. We did not hold much hope base on past results.
We had to go through the usual explosives swabbing at the door to the airport, a group was swabbed and then we waited behind a roped-off area until the swab was read by the machine, and everyone was “clean”. Then we also did the usual carry-on bag scanning right afterward by the entrance.
Once inside the airport, we all waited together and Michael handed out our boarding passes. Just like before, it was a disaster on seating. A very few people were seated together but most of us were not even close together. Stephanie and I were not even in the same row, she was three rows behind me, and based on the row number, she might once again be in the very back.
Next was security, and we had to do the facial recognition and passport scan before we could go into the security screening area.
It was similar, we had to remove all any items with batteries in them from our carry-on luggage. We knew the drill by now, so it went without any problems, and we were inside heading to our gate once we were body-checked individually by a person with a handheld metal detector. There is always some frisking done around your beltline and we are patted down too. I was in shorts, so there was not as much to pat down.
We headed out to our gate to wait about 90 minutes to board. We seem to waste a lot of time on these flight days with all of the time involved in getting to the airport, and then arriving at what we consider to be a little too far in advance. We guess that with a group, that is probably the safest way, there is no way to separate slow walkers from faster ones, so the whole group has to arrive early to make sure we all make the flights.
We boarded, and sure enough, Stephanie got the short straw, and once again was in the last row in front of the bathroom, but on the aisle, the worst seat possible. I was on the aisle three rows up from her on the other side. What was strange is that almost the entire back end of the airplane was all people in our group, but no one was sitting next to their significant other. With some coordination, we easily could have been seated together since the rows were almost entirely occupied by our group. One couple was in the two aisle seats right behind one another. It certainly appeared that the seats were assigned based on a list for the most part, and it was just putting bodies in seats without even trying to put anyone together.
Luckily, it was a short flight, less than two hours.
We departed on time, and as has been the case on all of our flights, we were served drinks and then a meal. It was another rice dish with some pork and gravy, with a vegetable. It was something green but not spinach or broccoli, but had a stalk and some kind of green leaf. I could not tell what it was and so I did not eat that part, but the rest was pretty good.
Of course, we got the 50-minute “warning” about shutting down the bathrooms in 10 minutes when we were scheduled to start the descent into Beijing and that set off a rush to the only two bathrooms in the rear of the plane. While the Chinese are efficient in serving meals on short flights, it seems like having only two bathrooms on a plane this size is too few. We were on a 373-900 and it had at least two hundred or more passengers, but only two bathrooms, so of course, there was a line.
The line finally subsided, but well past the allotted 10-minute time. The bathrooms were locked by the flight attendants and we were getting ready to land soon. I had forgotten to write about the chief of security onboard. Every domestic flight we have taken in China has had a security officer on board, and he makes several walks up and down the entire plane length during the flight, and wears what appeared to be a body cam. There is even a message given right after the safety briefing about the security officer and cautioning against any flight disruptions.
We landed on time and headed to baggage claim to get our luggage. We did not even have to get it off the carousel, there were people assigned to do that for us once again, we only had to check to see if it had arrived and that they were placed in the group of luggage that was taken off. All of the luggage for each Viking group has colored tags based on the particular Viking Guide, and our color was red for our guide Michael, so it was easy to see which bags belonged to the three Viking groups traveling together.
Not everyone was heading to the hotel from the airport. There was one paid excursion this afternoon for people who had signed up for it before the trip started. It was a visit to a Hutong and included a rickshaw ride. We had asked Michael about it at the beginning of the trip to see if anyone canceled, but he knew we had already seen a Hutong based on our telling him about what we did on our first three days in Beijing on our own. We had seen one and he just thought this wouldn’t be a good excursion for us to go on. Later in the evening, we did talk to Michael and Suzie, they had gone on the excursion and it sounded fun, but they really got back late and were tired, so we were halfway glad we had not tried harder to go at the very start of the trip when we might have been able to join the group. In the end, it seemed that excursions after flights were more tiring, the one we did in Xi’an was short and not that good, partly based on us arriving late to Xi’an.
The group going on the excursion was separated from those going directly to the hotel, and another Viking guide went with the excursion, and our guide Michael came with us to the hotel, which was about an hour’s drive from the airport. We had arrived at the newer airport that is south of Beijing today, so we were staying in a hotel south of the city tonight. This hotel was about midway between the two large airports since some people in the three Viking groups were leaving tomorrow out of both locations.
We arrived at the hotel, the Sheraton Hotel Lize, at around 1;00 pm, and we headed inside to get our room keys, which had already been assigned. Michael needed to give the hotel our passports to check us in, but we could go to the rooms before that was all completed. We were in a room on the 9th floor, about 2/3 of the way to the top. The room was nice, but not as nice as some of the other hotels. It was certainly sufficient, and the bathroom was really large and had a large bathtub in addition to a large shower.
There was a glass wall between the bathtub and the rest of the room, so you could see into the entire bathroom from the rest of the room. There was an electrically operated blind that could be lowered if one needed more privacy.
It was cooler in Beijing today, and the window to the room was open and there was a nice breeze.
We did not stay in the room long, Michael had told everyone he would escort us to the mall which was located about a 15-minute walk away from the hotel, and we were meeting him in the lobby and leaving at 1:30 PM.
About 18 people were in the group and we headed out. It was not a long walk, but more than some people thought it should be based on Michael’s description. Of course, what is a 15-minute walk for one person may be longer for others, so there were a few grumbles from some of the mobility-challenged people in the group.
Once we arrived at the mall, Michael left us to be on our own, explaining how to get back to the hotel, which we thought was going to be a challenge for some people who were not paying attention to how we walked here, which was pretty simple, only two turns.
We wanted to find somewhere to eat lunch, and there were quite a few restaurants in the mall, but they were in different locations on different floors. In general, many were grouped together, but just in different locations, so it took a lot of walking and escalator rides to get to them all to see what was here to choose from. Of course, without knowing anything about them by name, it was hard to find something we wanted without looking at a menu.
We did find the grocery store on the bottom level, but it was not an Ole and was much smaller. We did find a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc that was reasonably priced, and they had cold beer, but not in individual cans or bottles, it was a large metal bottle that might have been the equivalent size of three or four individual beers. The wine was not chilled, so I put in in the cooler alongside of some sake bottles that were being kept cold, but in the back. I was hoping it would not be found and would chill down while we went to find our lunch spot.
We finally found a place that served hamburgers and fried chicken sandwiches and settled on that for our lunch. It was a small to-go type restaurant, with some small bar-type eating tables on the perimeter on one side. Stephanie ordered the Schezwan Fried Chicken sandwich meal and I ordered a hamburger meal, the meal added fries and a drink to the sandwich. It took some Google Translate interpretation to get the order placed, but it all worked out except that they were out of Diet Coke, and only had regular Coke. We had to tell them no ice after we had placed our order, not wanting to try to determine if the ice was purified.
Stephanie brought the tray of food to the bar I was sitting at and she also brought some chicken nuggets that the server had given us to try. The sandwiches were really good, but the chicken nuggets were just plain bad, they had a strange flavor of some type of spice. We were really full when we finished, and thought that maybe we had eaten too much, especially since it was a lot more greasy than any food we had eaten lately.
We headed back to the other end of the mall and downstairs to the grocery store to make our purchase of beer and wine, as well as a Coke Zero for Stephanie to have tomorrow morning. The white wine was still in the cooler under the beer shelf, and it was fairly chilled already. Stephane also grabbed some potato chips for later Since it was already around 3:30 PM, we were not planning on eating any dinner, it was not included at the hotel tonight, once again because some people had gone on an excursion that served a meal.
The grocery store did have a large area for fresh seafood. Fresh meaning it was alive and in tanks of water. they had everything from Giant Lobsters to Shrimp, and about everything in between.
There were only self-checkout machines in this grocery, and when we arrived at one, we had to watch the people ahead of us to see how it all worked. There was no selection for “English”. We could see the Alipay icon at the end after they scanned all of their items, so we knew which button to push to make payment, and then selected the Alipay icon and paid with the app on our phone. We were lucky someone was ahead of us, it helped us to know which button to push to get to the payment screen, which was the only tricky part.
We walked back to the hotel, and I could feel the large meal not sitting that well on my stomach, so we headed up to the room to rest a bit and relax, hoping that would settle my stomach. Stephanie was also feeling the effects of eating such a large greasy lunch.
We were scheduled to meet Michael at 6:00 PM in the lobby for him to sign our Great Wall certificates in the special photo book we got many days ago on the first excursion. He was also going to write our names in Chinese on the certificate and sign it. We headed downstairs to the lobby and met him for that task and took the opportunity to give him his tip and a note appreciating his efforts and helping us to understand the people of China better.
We talked with a few other people in our group and then headed back up to the room.
We opened the large metal bottle of beer and relaxed in the room while the wine was chilling more in our small room refrigerator. After a bit, we got a text from Suzie and Michael, they were back from the excursion and wanted to come by the room to tell us goodbye. We are all leaving at different times tomorrow, they are leaving later in the afternoon and did not want to get up as early as they needed to meet for breakfast tomorrow morning.
After they left, we opened our bottle of wine and took turns relaxing in the large bathtub full of hot water.
Next, we packed our suitcases for the last time after getting out our clothes for tomorrow. We won’t have an issue with weight, the bags have been fully packed the last couple of flights and were at the 21 kg weight limit for the China domestic flights. Now, we can be at 23 Kg, but there is nothing else we need to add. We did a little rearranging of the carry-on suitcase, removing some of the spare clothes we had in it from the beginning for just in case luggage problems. We wanted to have a little more room in that suitcase for some of our souvenirs. The silk print is too long to fit into any luggage, so our plan was to use the backpack we normally pack in a suitcase as a way to carry it.
We wanted to have a little more room in the carry-on just in case Delta says we have too many carry-on bags. In that case, we will just pack the backpack into the carry-on and hand carry the box with the print.
We finished our wine and retired for the night, we were tired from getting up early this morning, and all of the travel, it just wears you out. We needed our rest since tomorrow will be a super long travel day as we head home, but at least we don’t need to leave the hotel until 9:45 AM.
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