City Lights: Night View from the Park Hyatt, Beijing

When in Chicago, I often take out-of-town guests to view the city lights at night from the restaurant and lounge in the Hancock Tower.  Not because its a great restaurant (sorry), but more for the view.  So I was excited to learn about this restaurant, The China Grill at the Park Hyatt, Beijing.

The China Grill at the Park Hyatt in Beijing is a similar to the Signature Room, in that you mainly come for the view because the food is only "good enough".  It wasn't bad, just about on par with a nice restaurant in any major city.  Although D noted that many of the restaurants on Beijing, even the nice ones, seem to be lacking in consistency of service and no one seemed to be able to understand how to time the arrival of dishes to the table. The saving grace for me were these two dishes:  the spicy/crispy calamari and a glass of citrus sorbet layered with frozen citrus slices, which served well to cut the oiliness of the rest of the meal.  

The view, however, is spectacular.  My pictures here cannot do adequate justice to the beauty of the city lights of Beijing at night.  Here is a video of this view, which I captured as best I could with my Flip Video.  Click here for the YouTube link.

Located on the 66th floor, its not as high at the Signature Lounge at the Hancock, but the China Grill is the highest restaurant in the city and has 360 degree views of Beijing. And the views couldn't be more different.  The lights in Beijing are much more colorful on the buildings as well as the signage and the streets curve in rings, rather than the grids of more modern cities.  Beautiful.

These pictures look like code from the Matrix, but if you look closely you can see that these are the windows of some of the smaller residential buildings and their reflections along with the brightly lit Chinese characters in the commercial signage.  Its like a painting.

Here are a few images of the interiors.  One of the stairs leading from the elevators near the lounge and one of the lobby interiors.

More to come ...