Beijing: Day 3 - City tour

We did it! We completed our assignment, with success I might add. Grietje, Brenda, Freddy and me worked hard on this assignemt to get it done as quickly as possible. Of course there is a bonus attached for getting a job done faster than it was scheduled.. so this means €€€!! You see for every day that AFC completes the job faster, AFC receives a bonus incentive from De Boer & Wendel. We in turn receive it from AFC. Our strong point is that we work well under pressure.

Today we started at 05.00 in the morning, by going through all the suitable hotels one-by-one and weighing the pros and cons. Last night Marcel from AFC Holland (team 4) came in from Doha to help with the evaluation as hotels are his specialty. Finally we had a top 10 selection. Together with the local representatives of De Boer & Wendel we made the final selection. Freddy called staffco and immediately got a flight back to Amsterdam via Vienna with Austrian Airlines. He will round up the deal on that side of the globe. AFC together with De Boer & Wendel will now set up the terms of the contract. Hopefully the contract will be in by tomorrow morning, so that we can fly back to Amsterdam by tomorrow afternoon. I am not spending my b-day in China afterall... thank goodness.

Our hotel

After 10 hours working non-stop, we decided to call it quits and take a city tour, considering this is probably the last day we'll be in Beijing. Beijing is a city with 5 million inhabitants and it's a very modern for a city that didn't have cars 15 years ago. We started by doing some shopping in Wangfujing.

Wangfujing shopping street

Then we took a tour bus to the world famous Tiananmen Square with other tourists.

Tiananmen Square

The Olympic clock for the Beijing 2008 games

Friendly Chinese people

Our tour group at Tiananmen Square

We then visited a temple.

Temple

Then we went on to the Xui Shui Market, alo known as the silk market.





Silk Market where you can buy lots of cheap stuff

Marcel being convinced to buy something

Then we decided to take a tour of Lotus Lane with a rickshaw. That was fun! This is the first time I did something like that.

Me in the rickshaw



Brenda, Grietje and me having rickshaw fun :-)

Lotus Lane entrance

Then we went back to Wangfujing to close off the night and have a coffee at Starbucks to celebrate a successfull closing of yet another assignment. I said it once and I'll say it again... Team 3 rocks!



Wangfujing at night

Starbucks Coffee

All-in-all a very fun day. I highly recommend a visit to Beijing to anyone. With the 2008 Olympics coming up, it's going to be a very popular destination!