Jet-lagged in Beijing

We arrived safely in Beijing. The flight itself was uneventful except for some scary crazy turbulence 30 minutes before landing. It was the type where the captain comes on and tells the flight attendants "to sit down immediately" and "if you're in the aisle right now sit down on the ground and hold on." Whoa. Luckily we were strapped into our seats at the time....our Economy Plus seats. An extra 5 inches of leg room makes all the difference! The only good story I have from the plane is that I got locked in the bathroom. That's right, I was minding my own business and when I tried to get out the door wouldn't open more than 3/4 of an inch. Great...what should I do? I knew I was stuck because the door on the bathroom opposite me was wide open and wedged against my door. So I knocked...and I waited...and I pushed on the door and tried to make noise....and no one came to help me. So I knocked again...and rattled the door...and started cursing (inside my head). Just as I was about to push the attendant call button a guy came out of the third bathroom and closed the door that was locking me. Saved at last! I really need to file a complaint with United about that one....it was traumatizing!

So the flight wasn't that bad - except for the bathroom incident - but we did do a lot of sitting around yesterday as the flight was 7 hours late leaving Chicago. Yuck. We ended up getting a membership to the United lounge and hope to put that to good use over the next three months. The bar and snacks came in handy yesterday, as did the comfy leather seats.

We made it to our hotel ok but had some trouble checking in as there was a major language barrier. We had to prepay for the room and they refused to give us change. They said it was a hotel rule to only give change at check-out. After arguing for a few minutes and getting nowhere we decided it wasn't worth our trouble. It was already 10pm and we needed to go to sleep and get ourselves on the correct timezone. So we made our way up to our room to find that the pictures on the internet weren't that accurate, it is kind of dumpy and there is no heat! But, they do have HBO so we huddled under a feather blanket and watched Uncle Buck until our Tylenol PM put us to sleep.

We're off this morning to do some exploring...check back in a couple days to see how that goes!