China recap: Hotels

We stayed in some fairly nice hotels in China, and they weren't that expensive (well, except for the last one...).  The ones we chose:

Beijing -- Crowne Plaza Wang Fu Jing (great)
Xi'an -- Hua Shan International Mountain Hotel (pretty good)
Chongqing -- Chongqing Hotel (the worst)
in between Chongqing and Yichang -- Presidential Cruises (okay)
Yichang -- Taohualing Hotel (great)
Shanghai -- The Portman Ritz Carlton (the best)

First, a few of the amenities from various hotels:

Little boxes for shoes (hubby's barely fit):

Bathrobes at the Portman:

And of course, gas masks:

Now, some room/hotel photos.

 

First, the best, the Portman in Shanghai:

 

Outside the Portman:

 

It's hard to tell, but the leather box on the dresser below contained the remote!:

 

 

View from our room at the Portman:

 

The horror: 

 

Outside the Portman, several shops and restaurants lined the drive to the valet stand/entrance:

 

Of course this was parked out front:

 

Given the price of license plates in Shanghai, and the taxes on foreign cars, the owner of this car probably dropped about half a million dollars on it: 

 

Beijing hotel, the Crowne Plaza. 

This hotel had great staff that spoke English and were pretty helpful.  As this was our first hotel in China, we were a bit surprised at the frosted glass between the bedroom and the bathroom, but it wasn't a big deal since there was a closet along the frosted wall, as well as a dresser (note, it would get appallingly worse on our trip):

Xi'an hotel, the Huashan Mountain International Hotel.

Second hotel of the trip. This hotel had no English speaking staff, but it was recommended by a friend who had gone to university in Xi'an and it was very nice.  They played the same Michael Bolton and Bryan Adams songs in the hallway and elevator constantly, which cracked us up.  The hotel was a little scary because there was clear glass between the bedroom and the shower -- but it had vertical blinds that you could close from inside the bedroom:

 

The L is just barely hanging on!

 

Outside of the hotel in Xi'an:

 

It was in the paper district -- the street on one side of the hotel was 80% shops selling papers, with little boards like this outside indicating choices and prices:

 

Third stop was in Chongqing, one of my favorite cities but by far the worst hotel.  The Chongqing Hotel. 

I wanted to die.  We have only been married a few years and I can't think of anything more disgusting than watching someone else take a crap, even if you love that person with all your heart.  And I don't want ANYONE watching me go to the bathroom.  This hotel was disgusting on many levels.  The hair dryer was sticky, the headboard was gross, ugh. 

 

 

On the left side of this picture is part of the glass "wall" to the bathroom:

 

Then we got on our Yangtze River cruise, with Presidential Cruises. 

Most of the cabins had two single beds, which is not our idea of a vacation, so we upgraded to a room with a single large bed.  Cruise cabin: 

 

Yichang hotel, the Taohualing Hotel. 

We didn't have reservations and asked in a taxi to be taken to our first choice hotel from the guidebooks, but the driver either didn't know where it was, wouldn't take us there, or it was closed.  This one was more expensive, but also listed in our guide, and we went for it.  Think it ended up around $60/night.  It was great, but we were only there one night and left early enough that we didn't even check out breakfast.  Biggest regrets were that we didn't feel very well so we didn't really enjoy the room much, and we failed to take pictures of the notable guests hanging in the lobby -- hubby was seriously irritated with himself for not documenting on film that he stayed in the same hotel as Kim Jong Il: 

 

A nice bathroom with an opaque regular door that you could close (the shock!, the novelty!):

 

Beautiful elevator lobby at the Taohualing:

 

There you have it, all our Chinese accommodations!