Guangzhou and Arrival in Beijing- so far so good.

Hey, they drive on the wrong side of the road here.

About ten hours to Guangzhou, and after a two hour wait I here for the connecting flight, and then three hours further north to Beijing.

Guangzhou airport is an amazing building.

  Other than being enormous, it is also a modern and very very busy.  Arriving just at dawn, it seemed to take for ever to get to the gate.   As usual, as soon as the plane stops, all the punters are off and racing, only not to move for the next ten minutes.....so we, being in cattle class, watch another ten minutes of the film...

Southern China Air was very good...pretty much the same as many other airlines, except....the seats are very hard.....maybe my bum is not as padded as it used to be(?). They are a pretty big concern with over five hundred aircraft.   The food was ok, and the staff were pretty good, and like battery hens, they condition us by putting the cabin lights on and off, and on and off....just for fun maybe

Carry on baggage.

It's one on the multitude of pet hates.  If one decides to have carry on baggage, that same one will get no help whatsoever from me to put it in the overhead head lockers.....and I will tell them so.     Must be tired, sounding like a whinging Wally.

immigration and customs went rather quickly, and no issues...we went through customs even though our baggage went straight through to Beijing.  Nothing to declare anyway.  

Arriving in Beijing at 1230 local time and most noticible is the 1000m visibility due to the smog......awful....  Then my greatest recurring nightmare.....the flag........

Herded onto the bus, and then 90-105 minute journey to the hotel, where the rest of the group are waiting for us...must be tired....yep that's what it is haven't slept for 29 hrs...that's what it is......

A complete anathema to the Caulfields, well the travelling in Europe and North America Caulfields.  The hotel we are staying at.....it has carpet, it has more than one power outlet, it has a window (complete with proper black out curtains) and the peas-D-resistance, bathrobes.   Apparently we aren't permitted to keep them.....we are staying at the Hilton......so rather than wait for the guide to collect all our passports and visas to arrange our rooms, we snuk in first and did it independently.   

Up to the sixth floor, a shower-  window wall between the bathroom and the bedroom- 

(IMAGE CENSORED BY THE CHIEF CENSOR)

and a short nap.  Wasn't til after the photos had been taken that we discovered that there is an electric blind that can block off that window.

Then went on an orientation wander.  If it weren't for the smog it would be quite a bit cooler too.

The five or so C it is now.   Promises to get colder tomorrow.   It'd bloody well want to get cold AND wet to get the benefit of the millions of $$$ we spent on our new coats.     Ffound maccas for the wifi, but it didn't work, so back to the HILTON, and the bathrobes.   

Big day tomorrow.....the zoo, the tea and min square, the forbidden city, and something else.    So off to bed, after sacrificing many hours to fine tune this travel version of Ulysses.