An old home-Style feel – Outrageous price drinks
A one-night stopover for me… I was looking forward to leaving Beijing. I just wanted a clean and comfortable room near the airport.
It struck me as a ‘once-magnificent’ hotel that had been maintained but not improved and modernized. It was an old homely style …like a 5-Star from an earlier decade. The check in was not fast, but not to slow. The room was acceptable for a reasonable rate.
The concierge staff attending the drive through wore uniforms that looked like they were the original ones used at the opening of the hotel and never updated…badly required. I almost expected to smell mothballs.
The location is very good. I walked to interesting shops and restaurants.
It was during Beijing’s short summer and I was hot. I was sad to discover the pool was not available as it was being renovated or something. A job I would have left for wintertime, had I been the hotel manager. I was very annoyed that I was not advised of this when I booked.
In the evening I found the hotel bar that was trying to be funky and ‘Western’ and the staff were pleasant. I ordered a premium beer that the bartender recommended. I soon met some other very interesting travellers in the bar that were in the aviation industry. One was a passenger jet pilot from my home-country New Zealand. The other guy was an aircraft dismantler who was there to start scrapping an old-Boeing 747. So this made some very interesting conversation; that conversation let me to order a second Jack Daniels and Coke, and then a third. I was rocked to get a bill in the morning for around $80 Australian dollars… the most expensive drinks! About what the room had cost me!
All-in, the place was ok. I hope my work does not take me to Beijing again at all… the pollution is ghastly. I can’t say I would go back, but cant say I wouldn’t.
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