China Day 2, Beijing

Left for the airport at 6am, woke up at 5am for the ride to the airport. Had McDonalds for breakfast to the amusement of finding out that their sausage McMuffins were made with pork patties. Reached the airport at 6.30am and was greeted with a rather empty Shanghai airport. Checking the E-tickets again, I realized that my mom had read the time wrongly. Instead of a 0855 flight, we had assumed it was a 0800 flight and we lost one hour of extra sleep time. As it was still early, the shops were still closed and there was nothing to do except to sit around and chat to pass the time. During check-in, there was a group of people presumably from the countryside who cut queues as well as a lady squatting down to apply her makeup. The check-in process was done rather quickly with minimal hassle. On the good side, I managed to find free wireless internet access! Hurray! Managed to check my emails and send out a few more as well. To someone: don’t be sad, I’ll be back soon! Flight was delayed as there was someone who did not board the plane in time and I think we missed the slot allocated initially for the flight and had to re-queue for the next available slot to take off. The flight was delayed for an hour and we departed Shanghai for Beijing at around 10am. Arrived at Beijing at around 12pm, cleared through customs in a breeze! No temperature checks at all so it was really fast. Went to see the Bird’s Nest and the Water Cube, saw the exterior of the 7 Star hotel which Bill Gates booked for 1 billion yuan for Olympics. Definitely cool! Nothing much in the stadium though, and the place had people smoking on the seats. So much for preserving the stadium. Went to the hotel after that to rest up, went for a super quick dinner and watched an acrobatic show at the Tian Qiao Zha Ji Yuan and returned to the hotel to rest.