The Palace Hotel, Beijing

April 23^rd through April 25^th 2001

The Room

A Room With A View — Well, sort of.

Next door was a high-rise under construction. It's apt to be that way for a while, because the builder ran out of money. We look across a field that has been cleared for new construction. The heavy equipment stayed busy while we were there.

And This Is The Room — a part of it anyway.

It went unnoticed that there were no pictures on the pictured wall. Others were decorated. The gold plaque between the lamps was a control panel for the electrical things in the room, lighting, television, air conditioning, etc.

When we first entered the room, we couldn't get the lights turned on. Finally we got the little flashlight out of the tote bag. Only then did we discover the card slot just inside the door. With the electronic door key inserted, the power worked just fine. We had seen this system in either Turkey or Greece, but had totally forgotten about it.

Another introduction was the down comforters on the beds. This and all the others except the Sheraton in Guilin made the beds with down comforters encased in cream-colored percale covers. These washable covers replaced the top sheets on the beds. They were oh, so comfortable. Never too warm and never too cool, and "light as a feather."

Ours To Keep All the hotels supplied their guests with robes and slippers. We were invited to keep the slippers. Owen did keep these from the Palace with their logo embroidered. Most of the hotels didn't supply two sizes, so they were all too big for me.

Re: Water. The piped water in China is not potable. That is, until it is boiled, it is not safe for us to drink or to use for tooth brushing, etc. The Palace and the Sheraton in Suzhou were the only hotels that had drinking water piped to the rooms. At the Palace there was a separate faucet for the filtered drinking water. Always carrying water bottles when we travel, we enjoyed being able to refill the bottles in our room during our stay there.

Sunrise in Beijing

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