First Stop China

We've made it to China.....the first stop in our journey. After emotional goodbyes to family and friends we made our flight and we are now writing from our hotel in Beijing. Sitting in Costa coffee at Heathrow waiting for our flight to board, neither of us could believe that we were about to go off travelling for a year, think we must have gone through a whole load of different emotions in the past 24hrs....sad after saying goodbye for a while, excitment for the adventure we are about to start and nervous also for the adventure we are about to start!! Just before we landed we were looking out of the window at our first glimpses of China, we turned to each other and laughed....I don't think either of us could believe we were finally here.

Trying to fight off the effects of jet lag, we spent the day walking around the Temple of Heaven which is really close to our hotel. Its a huge park but surprisingly quiet....its amazing you can't hear the thousands (I'm sure millions) of cars whizzing around outside. Once you get past the staring from the locals like they've never seen westerners before it was really quiet and peaceful walking around.

Everywhere is preparing for China's national day on Monday with flower displays, many of them based on the Olympics, around the city. Quite a few people that have talked to us to paticise their English have also mentioned the day and if we are coming back to watch the Olympics next year....it seems they are all enthusiastic about the event. Will we be the same in 2012???

We are looking forward to meeting up with our tour group on Sunday evening, hopefully some of them will be seasoned travellers and will be able to show us the ropes!!

We'll try and post again before we leave Beijing on the 3rd Oct.

E & S
x

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