Beijing

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Day 1
After a long but smooth journey to Beijing we arrive at 7am, grab our packs and jump on to the local bus for an hour journey to the city centre. After an unplanned 2 hour hike round the hutong with our fully laden packs we finally find our very comfortable hotel and cleaned up and crashed out for a couple of hours.

We were soon back on our feet exploring the streets and managed to order some pretty tasty noodles and duck "toasties" with a bit of guesswork and lots of pointing.

We then stumbled across Jingshaw Park for a nice evening stroll with some fantastic sunset views across the Forbidden City and the rest of Beijing before taking a rickshaw back to the hotel for an early night.

Day 2
At 10am, after a 14 hour kip, we were awoken by the maid and thought our day should probably begin. We headed for a very relaxing stroll around the Summer Palace gardens and took a short boat ride around the lakes to the picturesque Suzhou Street with tiny shops lining the banks, which were nice to potter around.

In the evening we saw an amateurish and overpriced acrobatics show-our first, but no doubt not our last, mugging of the trip!

Day 3
Today we visited the Lama Temple, a crowded and lively temple where everyone was praying and burning handfuls of incense. We also went to the Temple of Heaven, which had some impressive temples as well as peaceful parks with locals playing music and families milling around and enjoying the sunshine.

In the evening we met up with our tour group for China. There are 14 of us includng Brits, Irish, Dutch, Swiss a German and an Aussie. There are 2 other couples and it seems like a good mix. Our group leader 'Ricky', also seems nice and quite entertaining!

Our first group meal together was a delicious Chinese banquet, where we got to try all sorts of local dishes. Looking forward to plenty more to come.

Day 4
Today was an early start for a 90 min bus ride to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall. The views were stunning and the tough 2km walk up and down the wall really put into perspective the scale of the 6000km monster of a wall. We finished the trip with a toboggan down. Suz beat me hands down... She was so fast.

The evening we went to a show with kung fu monks breaking stuff with various body parts (and doing quite a bit of dancing)-it was a big improvement on the previous show!

Day 5
We started the day with a visit to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City-a huge 600-year-old palace ground in the centre of Beijing. In the afternoon we went to Donghuamen Street Market for a browse of the local delicacies and an after-dinner snack. We dined on some deep fried baby scorpions, which tasted like popcorn and were actually quite tasty! In the evening we went out for another group banquet, which included the local favorite, Peking Duck. We followed this with a few drinks in a busy waterside bar area near the drum tower.

Day 6
All templed-out, today we visited the Olympic Park to see the famous Bird's Nest stadium. We were a little underwhelmed and agreed it looked better on TV—but it was still good to see. After a deep fried ice cream in the park we dashed back to the hotel to meet the rest of the group before heading to the station to board our first overnight train to Shanghai.

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Photos

Jingshaw Park sunset
Views from Jingshaw Park on our first night in China.

Suz on wall
Suzanne on a big wall in China. It was Great! :-D

The Bird's Nest stadium
The Bird's Nest stadium at the Beijing Olympic Park. It was actually a little less impressive in real life than it was on TV. (London Olympic park is way better!)