Today is the day Nikki & I go to pick up our rings before the wedding (Well pick up Nikki’s ring anyway, I got mine for Christmas), we both woke up really excited about getting her ring but the jewellers was not open until 11 so decided to take advantage of the fact with live in London (and the fact we had so much energy) to visit The Natural History Museum and The Victoria & Albert Museum. From the outside the Natural History Museum is an amazing building, it is absolutely huge (much like the queue), when we eventually got in you are greeted by a huge mould of a dinosaur skeleton, as you get closer the vastness of the museum becomes clear. The detail in the brick work is phenomenal with lots of little animals ... read more

Now it was time to visit Leshan & the 233 feet tall Buddha carved in the rock, our time in Leshan was very brief, we left the cold & rain of Emei & headed off, I thought Leshan would be cold & rainy too so I put layers on again to keep warm. I was exhausted because of our noisy neighbours AGAIN so had a little sleep in the car on the way there, when I woke up the sun was shining & you could actually see the sky, needless to say I did not need the layers. We had to take a detour because a bridge to get to the Buddha was under construction but eventually we arrived, we got on a boat & had to put life jackets, again we were the only western ... read more

Our guide told us that the ancient Chinese believed that China was created by the first woman on earth, a Chinese Eve (I can’t remember the Chinese name), when Eve got to Ya’an she was so tired from making the rest of China that she didn’t finish building the roof & that is why it always rains in Ya’an, because the roof is leaking. When we left Chengdu to go to Ya’an you could actually see the weather deteriorating with every passing mile, at one point it was raining so much that it looked misty, when I looked out of the window of the car I couldn’t seen any buildings because of the mist all I could see was the floor about ten feet around the car and the rain coming down around us, this is ... read more

When we first met our guide she asked us if we liked Beijing & then said “It’s a little less built up in Xi’an, you won’t see as many signs in English here”, won’t see as many I hardly saw any in Beijing, I’m so glad we had a guide with us! At Beijing airport on our way to Xi’an I joined the back of the queue to check my bags in & get my boarding pass & saw a little old woman push in front of me, I didn’t say anything......until she said “excuse me” & asked me to move out of the way so her husband could join her “excuse me, I was in front of you & you have just pushed in” I said to which she simply turned to me with a ... read more

This is something I have always wanted to do but something always seemed to come up that prevented me from going (mainly friends making excuses). In April 2008 I got engaged and when we set a date for the wedding there was only one place I wanted my stag weekend and that was Pamplona and the festival of San Fermin, also known as the running of the bulls. San Fermin starts on the 6th July and finishes on the 14th of July every year, at 8am every morning roughly 6-7 bulls, weighing approx 650kgs (about 1450lbs) each are released on to the streets and they run from their pen in to the bull ring about 800 metres away. The run is up a slight hill the entire time, especially at the beginning, there are only two ... read more