Beijing 2013: Home away from Home

You may have noticed these posts are late. I'm having to back-date my posts (it's actually near the end of June now and we're already back from China). This is because China does not allow access to Blogger. Nor YouTube. And has spotty WiFi to boot. So, I couldn't blog while in China. And we were so busy, I didn't have a lot of time to upload photos to include with my text, anyway. But we do take our freedoms (and Internet freedoms) for granted here in the States, so the infringement thereof was an interesting first impression.

But speaking of first impressions, our hotel is beautiful. Since Jeff is presenting a keynote paper at the conference, his trip expenses are covered, including the room. What a great blessing, because some of the other cheaper hotels are apparently not nearly as comfortable. Air conditioning is spotty, breakfast buffet limited to Chinese food, no WiFi, staff only speak Mandarin; these are some of the issues other conference participants have had to deal with.

But we have a nice suite with gorgeous views out the humongous windows of our 13th story room (though very superstitious about certain numbers, 13 is not one of them in Chinese culture, so this hotel actually has a 13th floor). The staff is friendly, and language is not such a barrier here (although all the concierges have pretty poor English, which makes getting directions or advice rather difficult)!

We have a corner room, so our bedroom and sitting room face Olympic park and our bathroom looks out over the convention center. Our 70+ square meter suite is apparently bigger than most Beijing apartments!

I absolutely love our double vanity vessel sinks and the iridescent blue-green mosaic tile around the tub and walk-in shower. It's given me new ideas about our downstairs bathroom remodel!