Beijing

We are now in Beijing. Wednesday was a travel day and despite switching our plans from a 16 hour train ride to a 2 hour plane trip, by the time the time to reach the airports, the 2 hour early check-in and delays because of air traffic congestion, it took us nearly the whole day to make it to our destination.
When we got to Beijing, we noticed that it wasn't as cold as we feared, even if there was still some left over snow from the weekend.
It took us a while to negotiate our way to the hotel (The Emperor). The cabs here are different than Shanghai. Not very available and when you do find one, they don't want to use the meters. The rate they were suggesting were preposterous so we took the subway to the nearest station from our hotel and tried to find a cab willing to take us the rest of the way. Turns out our hotel is either not well known to the local cab operators or wasn't far enough for them to take us. We finally relied on help from one of the bell boy at a hotel right outside the subway station to negotiate for us. It required a lot of hand wringling and a call to our hotel (good thing we had cell phones and the hotel #!) for the driver to know where to go.

When we got here, we immediately realised that the trouble in getting here was well worth it. Check out this cool hotel room!
I was really happy to see that they had received my package containing all the souvenirs and some clothes that we didn't need in Xi'an. I didn't want to risk the overweight fees from the airline, so I had them shipped ahead of time. You guys can all expect to receive your souvenirs :)
My first impression of Beijing is that it is similar to Shanghai with a few less sky scrapers. There is lots of construction here too!
They also have modern looking buildings
And are still celebrating the olympic spirit if these signs in the Subway are any indication.
We walked around a bit to familiarise ourselves with our new home for the next week and dined in what was called a Tourist Restaurant by the Beijing Tourist Authority.

These noodles were a delicious start to fill our famished traveller's stomach
These crunchy duck spring rolls were also very delicious
A familiar dish came next, Kung Pao Chicken
Then this cuttle fish soup that had hints of lemon
And finally, this fried mandarin fish in sweet sauce didn't stand a chance even if it came last