Travels to China

For once I had a leisurely start to my travels. A 3 o clock train to spend a night at my Auntie Heather's house, as she lives quite close to Heathrow. Uncle David has even agreed to give me a 5:30am lift to the airport, what a saint!

I said a low key goodbye to my mum, dad, and sister, and a tearful goodbye to Misty before heading out.

Misty I love youuuuuuu ;_;

Aside from having to catch the train from Meadowhall and not Rotherham, the journey was disappointingly uneventful. No people commenting on my hat (probavly because I didn't wear one...), no little girls singing incomprehensible songs about scissors, no men screaming and punching trams, nothing! Good job I had a lot to reminisce about, or that would've been a totally wasted paragraph.

The evening was uneventful, chatting with Auntie Heather and Uncle David before going to bed aggressively early (at like 9pm!) due to my early start.

Strangely the house was dark when I got up; Uncle David had overslept by 5 minutes! He was very apologetic, but I really didn't mind, we still got there almost exactly 3 hours before my flight, and it's not like the airport would be busy at this ungodly hour...

Or so I thought! There was a queue to check in, cause by the perfect storm of a large party of Japanese people, and someone monopolising one of the three check in people for the whole of my 20 minutes in the queue trying to check in their obviously problematic silver... something

What is it you ask? Well, it's... something

After that though I was through security very quickly, and decided to have porridge for breakfast, as it is the closest to cereal you can get in airports usually. There was a poncy option with quinoa and coconut, so I thought I may as well go for it.

The flight was delayed 15 minutes, but that's no big deal with my 5 hour layover in Vienna. I killed time on the internet: soon I won't be able to google things! Shortly after boarding I realised I had made a terrible mistake. No water, no hard sweets, nothing to save my ears from the pressure, what a disaster!

Luckily I survived. The flight was uneventful save for 2 random big patches of turbulence; I'm glad Kathy wasn't there! 

I unfortunately had 5 hours to wait in Vienna, but I once again savoured google and Facebook while I still could, and had a burger for my lunch: something I don't know if I'll see much of in China. Vienna airport is extremely non-busy for its size, and there were... things that you could lie down on, so I had one of those for most of my wait.

A settee? No. Bed? Definitely not. Chair? Don't be silly. So... thing

The only notable thing I saw otherwise in Vienna was a man with no hair except sideburns. Shaved head, no beard, just sideburns. I wanted to take a photo, but that seemed too rude, besides, men with only sideburns are probably dangerous!

The flight was ok: a little shorter than I thought it would be, the food was ok, but there wasn't a very wide selection of films. I watched Logan (distinctly average) whilst I had my tea, then got 5 hours of horrible "sleep" before a breakfast sandwich and landing. At least I had 2 seats, but I found that aside from leg room it really didn't add much.

There was a massive queue for customs at Beijing, followed by a monorail to the baggage reclaim. I was met by my taxi driver, either a very stoic man or he couldn't speak English, and he drove me for about 45 minutes to my hotel. Everything seemed fine as we were driving through Beijing; a lot of trees lined the roads, there were interesting buildings to look at, and the traffic was only mildly horrifying. As we were getting close to the hotel though we entered what I can only describe as a death ghetto. People had fires in metal bins (on a 30 degree day!), the road had regressed to dust, there were piles of bricks everywhere (presumably to hit unsuspecting tourists over the head with), you get the picture.

Luckily the hotel is kind of like a gated community, with notably less bins on fire than the exterior! It actually seems quite nice, though it is called the "King Parkview Hotel", and I can see any parks nearby, which is slightly confusing. I had to wait a little for my room to be ready, then it was time for a nap!

Editor's notes: Hi, i'm Chris' sister Vicky who he has entrusted to publish his blog while he can't access it. It's my first time using the app so I'll apologise up front for any issues with the blog, in particular any random change in font which might occur (looking at you Uncle David..) 

In the last post Chris mused that I might add some interesting editor comments so now I'm feeling pressure to make some additions. So starting from tomorrow's post there will be an exciting new feature at the end of each blog. Watch this space!