Beijing today

- Weather is not good at all and there is smog all over town. Although we have had some good clear sky sunny days recently, recently the weather has been quite bad.
- Traffic is a bit improved but not dramatically (1). It may have to do with people like me and others renting two cars and thus having no real reduction in effective traffic.
- Traffic ... (2): Given the Olympic lanes in key avenues, we (not Olympic material) are also feeling left out and pushed to unnecessary queues. The fine for going on it is 200 RMB (equivalent of 20 Euro), but net net, there have been rumors that there may be other penalties apart from the cash.
- Airport: If leaving from Terminal 3, leave early... currently recommended to be at terminal 3 for a domestic flight 2.5 hours before time of departure and 3.5 hours for international !!! Terminal 2 is much more civilized and I recommend it heavily if you are booking your trip to or from Beijing.

The girls... all grown up


Kima, you already know. The other one is Molly.

My favourite restaurants and club in Beijing

Restaurants:
- Chinese - Da Dong or Duck de Chine for Peking Duck, depending on whether you want to go Beijing classic or high-end. I love Silk Route for Sichuan food... there's a couple more but don't remember the names ;-)
- Fusion - My Humble House for Asian fusion; Salt for ... fusion.
- American - Chef Too for good steaks (and food in general) and Grandma's Kitchen for memories of greasier times.
- Mediterranean / Latin - Mare for Spanish food, Alameda for some touches of Brazilian.
- Italian - the ones at the two Ritz Carltons - Cepe and Barolo. Cepe is my favourite restaurant in Beijing... full stop.
- Sunday Brunch - Chef Too, Orchard (although with ups and downs) or Monsoon at the Intercontinental... still to try the famous Westin Financial Street one.
- Middle Eastern - Rumi.
- Pizza - Kro's Nest or The Tree.

Bars & Clubs: Current favorite is ChinaDoll @ 3.3

The hassle that has begun... will continue

Well, these stories have been widely publicized so I won't go in detail into them... Basically, from making sure dogs are legal to more thorough Visa applications, we have seen it all in Beijing in the past few months.

Now comes the really tough measure that we all knew was going to happen: limitation on cars circulating in town. For 2 months - from July 20th to September 20th - private cars can only circulate on even days if their license plate is even numbered or odd days if... you got it by now. Although taxis, buses, etc, are obviously immune to the rule, many "strange" things are already happenning:
- People getting two cars to serve them: starting with the rental agencies down to normal consumers, there is a strong search for ... cars with "odd numbered" license plates. Apparently the Chinese prefer even numbers and there is truly a shortage of odd-numbered license plates out there.
- Dramatic hiking of prices for rentals: even for 2-month rentals of one car, one license plate :-), the price reaches the thousands of RMB per day. This might not look a lot to a European or American (1 Euro is roughly 10 RMB and 1 USD is roughly 6.8 RMB), but given that normal monthly prices are around 7-15 k RMB depending on the car, you can see the dramatic increase that we are noticing.
- People leaving town: for those who are not sports fans, a nice Summer break back home is looking quite good. I have some friends who have very actively planned their vacation for this year around the Beijing Olympics.
- Businesses incentivizing people to take days off: either through "plain holiday" on the opening day or Olympic leaves that match the number of vacation you take - you take 3 days, we give you 3 days for "free" - and so on.

For those of us who are really looking forward to the Olympics, we can only wait and see how it goes. I expect fantastic events but maybe some trouble getting there :-)

Coverage of the Olympics... right here

I have plenty of tickets for the Beijing Olympics and will be attending many events from Basketball to Handball, Tennis, Football, Table tennis, Beach Volleyball, Athletics, etc. On top of that... I live in town :-)

I will try to post some observations during this period so check this space.