Beijing #4 at #4 Banqiao. Christmas Edition.

Don’t be fooled by the cute courtyard and drapery over the bed at 4 Banqiao Guesthouse.

This was the title of the Trip Advisor review www.tripadvisor.com I just had to write for our latest stay in Beijing…and the following was the review:

I thoroughly researched our options for a cute upper scale (i.e. not a hostel or cheap hotel) unique and romantic place (yet not tourist ‘one-time-only’ prices) to stay in Beijing over Christmas. Having already stayed in a few fine hostels, each with private bathrooms, I expected much more from this “guesthouse” at over twice the price of our previous stays.

Although we made the most of it, the experience was quite disappointing – esp. after the pre-booking with the British-run b+b china operation went so smoothly via www.bb-china.com and they called back long distance to arrange payment and answer any inquiries. The bed and its bedding were by far the best and most comfortable part of the room – as most beds in Chinese hotels and homes are of the hard variety – this one was plush and the little touches with the linens and pillows were lovely. I am sure that in the summer this would also be a more attractive location to stay as they have a rooftop patio and sunlit common room. The former being unusable in the dead of winter, and the latter should have been unused as well as it was frigid.

By far the most unattractive part of our stay was that the rooms were not sufficiently heated – in fact upon arrival our room was freezing! Later with the heat blasting via aircon and a space heater (which they tried to take out of our room after the first night – trying to convince us that the water heaters, which never really got hot at all, would now be sufficient to heat the room) AND the addition of the water pipe heating – with stone floors and a door without a seal…there was always somewhat of a chill if you were not under the covers.

The other major downer is that the place is billed as a bed and breakfast — but I have not heard of a relaxing bed and breakfast that serves breakfast only between the hours of 7am – 9am!!! Even business hotel chains in the States hold longer breakfast hours. Especially it being a weekend and over Christmas – you would think, with few guests, breakfast would be a) served later in general and/or b) accommodated at guests requests.

Would not recommend staying in winter or if you think you’ll get bang-for-your-buck with the breakfast. Just a rug on the floor, seal on the door, sufficient heating and accommodating breakfast preferences would have made a world of difference! Thumbs down!

R on our bed

Other than that…the fact that we were steps away from Grandma’s Kitchen with it’s full American breakfasts and cute little solarium…and a few blocks away from our cultural undertakings for the weekend – the Lama Temple and Confucius Temple and Museum – was pretty good.

it was too cold to pray

China's revered educator thought that? Interesting...

Although every time we gave a cab driver our location (with directions in Chinese) they had absolutely no clue…none! Fortunately we never ventured too far from centre and could tell where they were driving and whereabouts to let us off. This lack of direction, even though Beijing is supposedly on a grid system, is baffling.

The other annoyance of the trip was spending almost 3 hours (no lie) searching for a particular English language bookstore. We asked no less than 6 different people directions to the place…2 of those times at hotel reception desks. Again we had the address in English AND Chinese….these directions were gotten only after the cab already dropped us off to where the bookstore ‘was just steps away’ with a wave of his hand. When we did finally get there, we were frozen, tired, and exasperated, and I had a headache from the cold. I did manage to buy 2 novels but Roland did not find anything worth shelling out the kuai for which was too bad.

We did have some fabulous French fare — Flemish on Christmas night at Morel’s…a Beijing institution as one of the first and still best expat restaurants. Le Cafe de la Poste will be remembered for it’s conversational spark and the generous bartender who gifted us with a carafe of vodka at the end of the night and told us to ‘Enjoy my friends!’ and enjoy we did. Both meals were dominated by great cuts of beef, simple yet innovative side dishes (mashed potato croquettes shaped like little perfect pears accompanied my Christmas night rabbit) and dairy in one form or another with affordable and tasty house wines…our favourite!