We are open! All 7 restaurants are fully functional. Almost all of the media is now here on site with a few to come in during the week. It has been quite the experience. I have been here for a month now and I have been able to see us start from nothing and end with fully stocked restaurants....it has been great.
Last Monday I was off and was able to go to the Great Wall. We wanted to go on a private trip where you hike for about 3 hours but the guy was booked. I am going to try to go on his trip in September. Anyways, we all rented a driver for the day and he took us out to the wall. It was about a 1 hour ride to the wall. We got there and we had two options; you could hike up the mountain to get to the wall or take a ski lift. Feeling good I talked most of the crowd into hiking up. The first set of stairs were like walking any steps and then we get to the second set. Straight up! Huffing and puffing we made it to the next flat spot and we all looked at each other and said, "should have taken the ski lift." After 30 minutes of hiking up to the wall we had made it. Standing on a structure that old was amazing. It was so peaceful up there. Unfortunately we did not have a very clear day so pictures did not turn out great but I still took a bunch which I will post later. The actual steps on the wall were so uneven. Some steps were your average steps while others were 2 feet. There were times where we were on our hands and knees to get up steps. It was a great experience and I hope I can go back in September for the private hike.
After we got back we were all trying to figure out where to eat. We were trying to pick a place from the list I had and someone suggested noodles and I suggested a place called Made in China. The description of the place said "best duck in china." After convincing everyone we should go there we jumped into a cab and headed to the Hyatt. The part of town the Hyatt is in is awesome. All the great restaurants and bars are in this area. Made in China was awesome. In the dining room they had 3 open kitchens. 1 was a duck kitchen, the other a dumpling kitchen and the third was a wok kitchen. We had the best seat in the house because we were surrounded by all 3. As I had told you before I have been hanging out with mostly chefs so eating is always fun because they always explain exactly what each dish is. They did all the ordering. We started out with lamb pancakes, geoduck, smoked duck breast, cuttlefish, beef knuckles, and duck gizzards in peanut sauce. You guys are all probably thinking there is no way I ate any of this...but I did. We took our time with those dishes because it took an hour to prepare the Peking duck. The duck finally came out and they carved in right in front of us. The chef came out and was showing us what to dip the duck in based on what part of the duck it was. The duck fat came out first and he handed me the plate. In broken English he goes, "duck..sugar...mouth." On the spot I grabbed my chopsticks and went to pick up a piece. I guess the pressure got to me and I kept fumbling with the chopsticks...the chef is looking at me like what an idiot and everyone at the table was cracking up. I finally just jabbed at it and got it and it tasted great. The meal was awesome and we will probably go back there before my time is up. There were 6 of us for dinner and we had two bottles of wine to add to all the dishes and the total was 1500 rmb which is 220 usd...pretty cheap for eating at a place in the Hyatt.
After dinner we went to the night market. The night market is the famous street in Beijing where you go and eat all the gross things like bugs, snakes, etc. The smell alone was enough for me not to want to eat anything. The market opens from 4pm to 10pm everyday. They don't store their food properly so that is where the wonderful smell comes from. I ate a pancake and that was it. One of the guys I was with ate a silk worm and almost died. I took some pictures so you guys can see...it was cool but I don't think I will go back there.
The past couple days, Tuesday - Sunday have been intense. We have been busy opening up everything so my hours have been very long. I have not slept much due to work and not feeling well. The city has become very busy and we are staring to see more Americans.
Just to touch on the weather and air quality here. I know the news has been saying how everything is going great here and the smog is down. I don't know if anyone was on cnn.com yesterday but the cover article was about the smog and there was a picture of the Birds Nest and you could see these thick clouds in the air. For the past month or so that is what it has been. It has been raining almost every night for the past week. Yesterday was a clear day but it seems like after they shut down the factories and limited the car use things did not get any better. Today is a little better. Hiking up to the great wall was rough due to the air so I can't imagine how the athletes will be able to handle this.
I am off tomorrow and heading to this park that overlooks the Forbidden City and possibly trying one of the 3 restaurants at The Ritz. I will try to post pictures of the wall tonight or tomorrow.
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