Happy 25th and Arrival in China

I left the afternoon of July 17th for China and arrived the afternoon of the 18th to Beijing...probably my shortest birthday yet :-)  but it was a good one.  Thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday!!

Today, all and all, went fairly well.  Arrival at the airport - check.  Checking in, getting boarding pass and not being charged for overweight luggage - smooth.  Boarding the flight - fantastic because I started drinking the mimosa's before aircraft doors closed.  Food on the flight was delicious and I ate a lot - had seconds on the ice cream.  While eating I watched the movie Date Night which I thought was funny and cute all at the same time.  For the rest of the flight I slept and listened to music until 'morning' time which was really lunch time because it was the next day...skip head 13 hours already...time really does fly. 

Disembarking from the plane went smooth as well and no problems with customs.  I headed down towards baggage claim for the dreaded hurry up and wait game.  To my surprise the bags had already started around when I arrived.  Since the baggage trolleys were free I snagged one to use and after only 5 minutes my safety bag showed up.  Now I was thinking "sweet, maybe I won't have to wait around until the end" but I thought it too soon.  I waited, and waited and waited and saw everyone slowly leaving the area from my plane but my second bag was no where to be seen.  A nice lady with a scanner scanned by baggage claim tickets and said the bag I was waiting for did not make the flight.  Bummer - I filed a report and hopefully within the next 2 days I will receive my bags at my final destination hotel.  This happened to me as well when I went to Trinidad except it was my safety bag which did not make the flight.  I wonder if this will start to be a tradition/game - let's see which one of my bags did not make the flight at the other end?!

I went to the area of the Beijing airport which has shuttle buses thinking maybe my hotel had a shuttle bus I could take.  Well it did not but the nice lady at the ticket counter said that if I took bus number 6 right outside it would take me to where I needed to be - alright then, I hoped on the bus.  After taking my seat and the bus left the airport I then realized I did not exactly ask which stop to get off at but recalled which area she said.  According to the sign I just barely noticed before I got on the bus my gut told me I stay on until the end of the ride.  The end of the route came and I did not see any buildings with any hotel names on them so I confirmed with the bus driver that I was indeed in the correct area.  The bus driver pointed to the main road and told me to turn left - hotel will be there.  I did just that but only noticed the Marriott.  I did not want to keep walking just in case I was going to wrong direction so I walked into the lobby to confirm.  The bus driver was indeed correct, I just needed to keep walking about 5 minutes further.  Now keep in mind that I am wearing a backpack and pulling my heavy safety bag or other carry on luggage behind me while the temperature was 90F and high humidity.  Doesn't that sound exciting?! 

It was glorious to check in and go up to my air conditioned room.  I tried turning the lights on but noticed nothing happened and I thought maybe something was wrong or fuse blown.  I determined somehow that this small box with a red light next to the light switches fit the room key so I swiped my room key in then back out again and what is that saying...?...'let there be light'  Although after maybe 20-30 seconds the lights would go out and I would keep swiping my key card thinking how am I going to keep these lights on continuously.   Took about the third or fourth time for me to realize I leave my room key in the slot to keep the lights on.  That was my clue that it will be an early bed time for me tonight!

Hopefully Air China will not lose my safety bag tomorrow....night y'all! (or should I say morning to most)