Back from Beijing: Great Place and Great Watch Experience!!!

[Submarino]

Finally I am back from my trip to China. What a wonderful place! Here are some pictures of my trip. First, let's start with my AP ROO keeping our flight time. Wish I had more than 12 hours on that chrono as the total flight time from Chicago to Beijing was 13 hours and 11 minutes.



Beijing is a wonderful city with tons of history but also with a very modern side and great architecture. Here's the Tiananmen Gate at the Forbidden City.


The modern and upscale shopping area on Wangfujing Street.



The best Peking Duck in all Beijing. DaDong at Jinmao Place.


One of the best restaurants in Beijing. 'Huang Ting' at The Peninsula.


The Great Wall of China at Mutianyu. Amazing place!!!


The Olympic Park with the amazing 'Bird's Nest' stadium.


The picturesque 'Summer Palace'.


Sun Tung Lok, one of the few restaurants in China with three Michelin stars.


Some delicacies ready to be fried and others already fried at the Wangfujing Street Food Market. These included: snake meat, seahorses, starfish, scorpions (two kinds), centipedes, tarantulas, etc.



Now let's go to the topic that everyone is really interested in. The watch market is amazing! Almost every single luxury watch brand has a beautiful boutique in the Wangfujing street area or very close to it.

The exclusive boutiques that I visited included: The Rolex Experience, Rolex Boutique, Tudor Boutique, Jaeger LeCoultre, Hublot, Audemars Piguet, Tag Heuer, Rado, Vacheron Constantin, Glashüte, Carl Bucherer, Piaget, Richard Mille, Breguet, Ulysse Nardin, Omega and independent ADs that carry multiple brands. The prices in general were very high compared to the U.S. At least a 25-30% markup over U.S. Retail Prices so now I know why Chinese consumers prefer to buy their watches here in the U.S. Also tried on the new Explorer II in both black and white dials and unfortunately didn't like them at all.

Here are some pictures: