798 & the art hotel

Beijing I am not sold on; I would never want to live here or even stay for an extended period of time. But I am so completely sold on 798, I think could live in this little area (which is actually much larger than I initially thought). I'd have to become an eccentric writer or something, but I could probably manage that.

I'm sitting in a little second story cafe writing this morning and the ambiance is phenomenal. There's beautiful and random art all over, there was Spanish lounge music playing earlier but it has switched to the Beatles and there are two really sweet dogs and a kitten wandering around. They had the animals locked up and they were whining and sounded so sad I convinced the staff to let them out and now they're hanging out with me. I dig it.

Last night, I stayed at an "art hotel" that is a 20 minute walk down the street from 798. I checked a couple different places for a reasonable hotel to stay in that was in the city but in the same general direction as the airport, and this fit the bill and sounded interesting. I found it on Priceline, it didn't even show up on any of the Chinese websites I was looking at.

 

The hotel has three classes of rooms. They have the tiny cubbyhole looking rooms you think of when you think of China, which I almost stayed in for the experience, but you do not get your own bathroom and seeing as how I am about to head stay with a friend and her boyfriend for a week I figured I should enjoy a private bathroom while I had the chance. The next class of room is what I chose, an art room. They all have some kind of art taking up a whole wall and are small interior rooms. I wasn't planning to be in my room much, so it worked out quite nicely for me. The next class of room is really heavily themed art rooms that looked very cool. The design of the whole space of these is beautiful and they are all different. All of the rooms are pretty reasonable; I was definitely happy with the place! Maybe not the closest to any crazy clubbing nightlife, but that wasn't part of my plan for this trip anyway. I would stay here again.

Duh?