Aviation Museum in Beijing

Our vacation to the Philippines was starting today. Up and left home at 7:30 a.m. We drove to Beijing. It was a great drive because there were no trucks on the road. All the truckers must have already been on vacation for the New Year. Bright, sunny day too. Still cold but that's ok.

Our first stop was the Chinese Aviation Museum. We pulled in just before 10. It is free to walk around outside but if you want to go in the buildings it cost. We went to the first huge building that is built into the mountain. We paid 20 rmb a piece for 3 adults and 10 rmb for Cameron (11 bucks total). Inside there was all kinds of information but most was in Chinese. There were a lot of pictures, planes, models, engines, etc. to look at.

We made it to the museum.

A neat little plane.

A ton of planes and equipment to look at.

In the building.  This was the first thing we saw.  Some dragon
looking dynamite spear thing.

The Wright Brothers?

Cameron and I checking some models out.

They had little planes too.

The signs were funny.

Cute.

Mr. Xue enjoyed the museum too.

Cameron thought it would be cool if a plane had glass all down the side
like this model.

As we made our way through the building we came to a big tunnel. It was on the dark side so pictures didn't work very well. There was plane after plane lining both sides. Some were really cool. In this section the information was in English. It told whether the plane was an original or a replica, all the dimensions, how many people they could carry, and what it was used for. This was probably the neatest section of the whole museum.

Weapons.

My favorite plane.

Old plane.

Cameron enjoyed looking at all the planes.

At the end there was a "present shop". We decided to go in and as we did Todd said "I'm sure there is nothing in here we want". Two seconds later he was buying 6 little planes. They use rubber bands so they were cheap. Cameron wanted to try one out but we made him wait.

We exited the back of the huge building and walked around the outside to the next building. On our way there were bombs, cannons, and planes to look at. We looked and walked fast because it was 14 degrees out and we were freezing. This place would be much better with warmer weather.

Big bombs.

Nice white tires.

Cool.

Rows of planes.

We made it to the second building. We paid 20 rmb per adult again but this time Cameron was free. This building was much smaller. It had more planes. We decided to go to the bathroom. The ladies bathroom didn't have any lights and as I went to the second door it was locked and I realized there was water on the floor. Thank goodness I had my boots on. Todd told me just to use the guys bathroom. This was against my better judgement but I did it. He stood by the door even though there was no one else around. Back out to go through the rest of the building.

Back outside we walked past some statues and more planes on our way to the van. There was a plane we could have paid extra to go inside and sit in the same seat as Mao but we decided not too. We were almost running to the van by now because Cameron and I were ice cubes. We both had thin sweat pants on so our legs weren't fairing so well. As soon as we were in the van we turned our heat seat on and kicked the heat on. Once we were thawed out we felt much better.

Lots of statues.

Pretty neat.

Next stop was Korean BBQ for lunch. We were originally going to go there for dinner but we realized it was close by where we already were and we wanted Mr. Xue to be able to get back to TEDA and start his holiday. We had about a 10 minute wait to get our table. Once we ordered it was go time. They started bringing food fast and furious. Our girl grilled our beef for us and the guy grilled our pork. We had an awesome lunch. We all ate too much...with all the meat, calamari, mushrooms, green beans, peppers/egg things, lettuce, and veggies. For the price of $128 (796 rmb) it was worth it. Thank goodness we brought Subway sandwiches and salads we can eat for dinner.

Our lady cooking the meat.

Eating time.  Yum.

Hotel was next. We unpacked the van, said "zaijian" (goodbye) to Mr. Xue, and checked in. We decided to relax and watch Secretariat. It was pretty good. Went to the lounge for drinks and games of Skip Bo.

Back to the room. Cameron ate half a Subway sandwich, Todd had a McDonald's cheeseburger, and I had nothing. None of us were very hungry after that huge lunch. We watched Like Mike 2. Basically the same as the first one. It was ok. Watch a little Wipe Out then went to bed.