Off for our next adventure in China. We arrived at San Jose International at 6:00 am. After checking in and clearing security, which was very easy with our TSA precheck, I can now relax. The first thing we do is look for the lounge that our Priority Card will give us free access to use. The lounges are a nice quiet place to relax and have free food and drinks before your flight.
We arrived in Beijing during rush hour. There was a long line of people waiting for taxis, so we had to wait awhile to get a taxi. Once in the taxi, it look another 2 ½ hours to reach our hotel from the airport with all the traffic. The people at our hotel did not speak very much English, but everyone was very friendly. Breakfast was good with lots of Chinese options like steamed buns, noodles, and stir fried vegetables. There were also a few Western options like waffles, eggs, and pastries. The dining area for breakfast filled up very quickly with what looked to be businessmen dressed in their suits. We thought it seemed odd seeing all the businessmen since it was the weekend. We also noticed Drew was the only person having coffee. The other guests were drinking soup broth from bowls.
After breakfast we checked out of the hotel and headed to the railway station to pick up our train tickets.
At the train station we were a little confused about where to pick up our tickets. It turns out that there was a door right next to the selfserve ticket machine that we had to go through to get our tickets. After going through the door our belongings had to go through an x-ray machine. Afterwards, as we were gathering our belongings, we stepped aside to take a look at all the different ticket windows. We had a guard walk up to us and point us to a window. We waited in line. When it was our turn I handed the lady our passports and the paperwork from China DIY Travel. We chose to have all of our train tickets printed out for all 3 trips. We were suppose to pay a little for having all the train tickets printed at once, but she would not take our money and gave us a big smile. With our tickets we headed to the main entrance. We put all of our belongings through the x-ray machine again. We tried to scan our tickets at the automatic entrance, but they would not scan. A security guard came over and asked to see our passports. He looked over the tickets and our passports and then let us through.
Once inside the huge terminal it was easy to read our tickets again with the help from China DIY Travel. They give you directions on how to read the ticket. We found our waiting room. It was a large room filled with people, chairs, and luggage.
With a little looking we were able to find 2 chairs together. As we sat and watched everything going on in the waiting room, I felt quite pleased that we were able to have in hand our train tickets that we had ordered on the internet over a month ago. People start lining up early at the gates, we decided to get in line. Once they started letting people through the gates it was a fast process to get through. We found our carriage and then our seats. We sat down and were ready for our adventure to begin. We knew that the train had boiling water available, so a few hours into the ride we had our instant bowl of noodles for lunch. We looked like the locals with their instant noodles. We even had a couple of Americans on a tour stop and comment to us about our noodles. I think they were envious of our lunch.
