Take off to China

My first recap of many of my amazing trip to China starts now with how we got there.
It seems like a long time ago now but on Friday 25th June after a year of planning and preparing it was time to go to the airport. David had taken the morning off work so he could drive me there and it was a really odd journey as I was really excited but also a little sad as I wasn't going to see him for over 3 weeks. As I checked for the millionth time I had my passport we arrived at the drop off point and then it was time to say bye. I just about managed to keep it together without totally bursting into tears and waved him off then took a deep breath and went to find Lynsey inside. We were flying with Air France to Beijing via Paris but since we hadn't booked in online we ended up sitting at opposite sides of the plane the whole way which was a bit unfortunate.
We had a 2 hour stopover in Paris which was just enough time for me to practice some French and get myself some Chinese Yuan. After a mix up at the travel agents in Edinburgh I only had 400 Yuan rather than the £400 of Yuan that I had ordered. By the time I picked it up it was too late to organise more so this meant I had around £40 for my travels. Luckily the Bureau de Change at Paris did have Yuan so I managed to get the remaining £350 worth there. Although China is cheap, 400 Yuan would have lasted me for the weekend before the trek never mind the week!
After a coffee it was time to board the plane to Beijing and it all started to get more real. We really were in the minority on the plane and it was even worse that we weren't sitting together. Thankfully Air France have an in-flight on demand system so I was able to watch movies and listen to music to pass the time. I tried to sleep a bit too but that plane was loud it was impossible! After 10 long hours we arrived in Beijing. It felt like the middle of the night but actually it was early afternoon as we waited in the queue for passport control I looked around and tried to take it all in. It felt really odd to be somewhere so different but exciting too. We were both accepted no problem then picked up our bags and set off into the unknown that was Beijing. We had decided to get a taxi into the city for easiness but this turned out be be slightly stressful as we were bombarded with people pushing cards into our hands and grabbing our arms trying to drag us over to their cabs. I had looked up in my guidebook how much a taxi should have been and it was 100 Yuan, some of these conmen were trying to charge 280-400 Yuan so we shook them off and managed to find the official taxi rank. After asking the driver to use the meter and confirming it would be around 100 Yuan we got in the back, relieved that we were on our way to the hostel at last after a mammoth trip.
We had booked a room at the Peking International Youth Hostel and we couldn't wait to get there!