We’re only going to stay for a week and the main purpose of our visit is to secure an apartment, so we have an address to give to the moving company in August, which enables them to move our stuff faster to Beijing.

Both of us never had taken the airport express train to the city, so we decided to try that out and apart from the double security checks (they need to scan everything you have with you) it is super convenient. We took it to Sanyuanqiao where we changed to the number 10 subway to Hujialou, 4 stops to the South along the eastern 3rd Ring Road.

I think the subway system post-Olympics has made Beijing public transport way more convenient than it used to be and they still charge you only RMB 2 per ride; that is about €0.25! The airport express understandably is a bit more expensive at RMB 25 (€3) per person.

We have checked into a nice apartment-style hotel room, conveniently located just South of Sanlitun with a small kitchen and a desk and highspeed internet. For only RMB 298 per night a bargain I think.

Internet in China comes with the usual frustrations which are no access to Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and what not. We didn’t bother to install a VPN on our laptop, so this time we just have to do without the social media, but obviously once we move back Witopia will have another happy client!
Apart from those little nuisances the connection speeds here are FAST and many places have free wifi.

One of the things that immediately caught my attention are that it seems that the general level of service has greatly improved. Service is professional and comes with a smile from the staff at subway stations to shop assistants to waiting staff in restaurants to real estate agents. To some extent these people even speak English if needed/wanted.
Only most taxi drivers are still morons, guess that will never change…

And apart from the fact that most taxi drivers are indeed morons, it is so great to be able to use them to go anywhere you want (as long as you know where you’re going)! There has been a tiny change in the standard taxi fees where an additional RMB 1 tax is charged once the destination is more than 3km from the pick-up point; it seems this surcharge is for gasoline, fair enough I think.

Beijing also seems to have cleaner air than before. Although we arrived in the typical Beijing fog (combination of humidity steam and pollution) the last two days we have woken up to clear blue skies and a temperature of – in my eyes lovely – 34 degrees Celsius.

The eternal gridlocks on the Beijing roads seem to have improved too. From our apartment window I have a clear view onto the East Third Ring Road and traffic on this Monday morning is going through at normal speeds in both directions, pretty amazing difference from 2 years ago!

Before we left for China I had been pretty worried about my Chinese. Small talk never has been a problem as I have “practiced” that enough with the Chinese shop owners and restaurant staff in Valencia, but an intelligent conversation is a different thing altogether! And you can imagine that I was amazed at how much immediately came back to me!
Most of Mia’s friends can speak some English, but my parents in law don’t speak a word, so you can understand my initial worries on our first visit immediately on Friday evening! Well those worries turned out to be not necessary at all. It was great seeing them again, we had a great home-cooked meal and great conversations throughout the evening.

Funny is that I noticed that Spanish and Chinese fill the same part of my brain and sometimes words like tambien and todo pop up instead of their Mandarin equivalents. Chinese clearly is taking up most part of this side of my brain and it seems very likely that I will quickly forget most of the Spanish I learned over the past two years (which is not an awful lot to begin with, hahaha!).

And then the gorgeous Chinese food! Needless to say that we have been on a splurge, eating all the beautiful things that we haven’t been able to eat for so long! Mia’s mum made jiaozi (dumplings) for our home-coming meal and they were delicious! Saturday night we went to Haidilao to have Sichuan style hotpot and it was yummie and spicy! This restaurant also boosts an exceptional high service level: while waiting for a table (yup, it’s a popular place) we were offered all kinds of snacks and women can even get a manicure while waiting for a table. Also the staff took care of our friend’s 3 year old in a special kids corner, so the adults could concentrate on their own food

Mia fixed her Xinjiang food craving by ordering some to our room for lunch, yesterday’s lunch with Mia’s parents we went to Xiaowangfu in Ritan Park and had some of their specialties including Beijing Duck and last night we went to my Cantonese favorite 24-hour restaurant Jindingxuan to have all kinds of dimsum and other delicacies I have been craving.

Prices of food in restaurants have gone up a bit since we left, but are still very reasonable and for what you get it is definitely way better value for money than the food anywhere in Valencia!

This afternoon we will start our hunt for a suitable apartment and although there is a limited choice in our price range, I am confident we will find something that suits our wishes!

I had planned for some time already to propose to her in the Alhambra and it was perfect!

During the day we visited the Alhambra, but I also planned an additional nighttime visit. Although it was raining Mia found it quite romantic.

The visit to the palace itself was not suitable to pop the question as there were way too many people and my idea to ask her in once of the gardens was made impossible due to the rain and because of the fact that during the nightly visit the gardens were off-limit.

When we exited the palace the doors of the opposite palace of Carlos V were open and since we hadn’t visited that during the day, we decided to take a peek. The place was almost deserted and we could even go upstairs to have a view over the central courtyard that is circle shaped with huge roman pillars.

It was then and there that I decided that it was the perfect place to ask her, but it still took me a bit to convince Mia to stand still for a few seconds. When I finally managed to “corner” her against a pillar, I made my knee-fall, produced the ring and asked Mia the question “Will you marry me?” to which she responded with a big “YES” following a long “OOOHHH”.

So we’re happily engaged now and plan to get married at the end of September this year!

We spent a fantastic time visiting the sights in both Granada and Córdoba and will certainly at one point return to the latter to see more of it as we only had half a day there.

These items of total delight did not fall from the sky. They were brought by Inge, my best friend for more than 15 years now.
She left us earlier this week, after a stay of 5 days.

She arrived on the last day of Las Fallas and therefore had the great chance to see a glimpse of this pretty unique yearly festival. A pretty important glimpse at that, because the last day is the day of the cremas, the public burning of all the puppet structures that have been set up in more than 300 locations in the city! Earlier I already put photos online of the fallas tour we made.

Below I have added a video impression of the fireworks show that rang in the crema of the last falla on Plaza del Ayuntamiento.

We did quite a bunch of nice things together with Inge and because she already had visited Valencia before, we also could do some things that are most of the times not included in a first visit.

On Friday we took her to the Museo del Carmen to see the same exhibition of drawings we saw with Pam. In the evening I cooked her favorite Chinese dish: coca-cola chicken.

The next day we took the train to X‚àö‚Ćtiva to see the castle on the top of the hill there. I already visited in November 2008, but for Mia and Inge it was a first timer and because the last time we didn’t have time for the Moorish part of the castle, for me this time was again very nice and interesting!

Back in Valencia we had a great tapas dinner at a restaurant that Inge went to on her first visit: the extremely popular Bodeguilla del Gato.

On Sunday we had a long walk up and down the Turia and visited the Oceanografico that is part of the Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias. We saw a great dolphin show and we saw two walruses mating, which was quite funny to watch. The only part that left us not impressed was the penguin area, where we immediately had to think of the not so happy zoo-scene in the movie Happy Feet.

In the evening we had dinner at Sagardi where we ate a whole bunch of the most delicious pinxtos! Especially Inge loved the strong cider there too, a combination that ensures that many people return to that restaurant after their first visit.

The days were flying by with so many things to do and Monday was Inge’s last day already. Mia had to go to school and because the weather was absolutely gorgeous we went to the beach, where we sat on a terrace enjoying the sun and each other’s company the whole afternoon.

All in all we enjoyed Inge’s visit very much and in a couple of months it is our turn to go visit The Netherlands…

[salbumlist=1,n]

PS yesterday I had a go with Google’s Picasa 3 and I am using the great Shashin plugin to show the photos above that I uploaded earlier.

[related_posts]

[singlepic=251,320,240,,center]

Pam arrived on Thursday afternoon and after freshening up we went to meet Mia on the terrace of Lisboa. It was great seeing each other again, last time I saw Pam was in September on a boat in the Amsterdam canals.

That afternoon we climbed all the stairs of the Micalet (Valencian, in Spanish: Miguelete) to have a great view of Valencia.

We had a tapas dinner at Tasca Angel and went for another drink on Plaza Negrito.

The next day was “tourist-day”. Mia went to school and Pam and I went on a long walk through town. We visited the Mercado Central (Central Market), La Lonja (Silk Exchange), the Plaza del Torro (bull ring) where posters hang to announce the bull fights during Las Fallas – Mia and I are planning to see our first bull fight in the next few weeks.

After a quick comida (lunch) in the sun on a terrace in Ruzafa – an old area of Valencia that is becoming hip and bohemian with all kinds of restaurants and little bars – we walked to Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias (City of Arts and Sciences) with its beautiful architecture. We had another drink on a terrace in the afternoon sun and walked back home through the Turia – the riverbed turned massive park – and the Jardines del Real (the former gardens of the Palace of the King), which are next to our home.

In the evening Pam invited us for a fantastic dinner at Tapa2 Gastronomik, a “fusion-tapas”-restaurant recommended by a friend.

Saturday was a rainy day, but we still managed to do some fun stuff, see the Torres de Serranos (one of the old city gates) and we went to Museo del Carmen to see a fantastic exhibition of 80-something drawings by the masters. The drawings come from a private collection of 19th and 20th century artists such as Van Gogh, Miro, Picasso, Salvador Dali, Gaugain, Renoir and many, many more.

Of course is a visit to Valencia not complete without eating paella, so we had that as part of our lunch in a small cafeteria nearby the Mercado where Pam also bought her own paellera (paella pan).

We skipped the dessert that was part of the menu del dia (set lunch) and instead went for a horchata with fartons (horchata is described in linked post, fartons are the sweet and sugared bread-sticks that you dip in the horchata) and chocolate con churros (cup of melted chocolate with sugary deep-fried bread-sticks).

The rest of the afternoon we lazily spent at home and Mia and I cooked dinner in the evening. Early Sunday morning Pam went back to The Netherlands after a quite intense and fantastic 3 days! We were still so absorbed by her visit that we didn’t even realize it was March 1, the start of Las Fallas and totally missed the first Mascleta.

So I will leave now to pick up Mia from school and we will then go to Plaza del Ayuntamiento (the City Council Square) to see (and mostly hear) our first Mascleta. From what we have heard this type of fireworks is way more intense than that of Chinese New Year…

More photos of our days with Pam here.

Also decided to implement the NextGen Gallery that I use for most photo albums for websites I develop for 3rd parties on my own website, just because of user-friendliness.

Yup, my girlfriend Mia and I are going on a well-deserved, long holiday to Thailand! We start on Koh Lanta and we’re planning to do absolutely nothing, but staying in the sun, on the beach, in the sea for the first 4-5 days Then we’ll see if we get tired of that and hop over to another couple of islands or maybe even head to Singapore or whereever… We have about 2-3 weeks, so we’ll see!

Anyways, to show off my latests works, here goes:

October 2007, website development incl. CMS (Content Management System) for Die Kochmützen.

November 2007, website development incl. CMS (Content Management System) for DressCode Fashion.

December 2007, website development for EZ Pro Cleaning.

January 2008, complete redesign and re-development incl. CMS (Content Management System) for Beijing Day Trips.