Friday 25 September We get up early. I slept well on the very hard bed. It's difficult to wake. We take the subway to the north station. That's easy. Trying to get tickets to the mountain, that's hard. The machines English button is disconnected and the ticket lady speaks virtually no English. The translation app is only helpful to a point as with no wifi/data there is no translation of exactly what we want, and only set phrases with a few changeable options. W...

Thursday 24 September I'm awake early because the older couple get up and talking quite loudly with the door open and the light shining in. It's not even 6am yet! Oh well. When we arrive at 8:15 we make our way out of the station and to the bus we need to catch. A few ppl approach us about taxis. We get off at stop 9. It's complicated to find and we walk up and down the street. Eventually someone helps is and we enter an apartment building and the man helps us c...

Wednesday 23 September We don't have to check out until 12 so we have a relaxing morning. It's nice not to to rush off somewhere. We decide to do a rickshaw tour of some protected hutong's. We walk some of the way and catch the subway. On the way we pass a hair accessory store and I find some curly ties I've been looking for. So cheap too. There are so many rickshaws but they all seem to be the same company. They want ¥100 each for a 40 min ride. We get his ...

Tuesday 22 September. We want to leave early so we can see as much as possible! We share our last block of noodles for breakfast. We leave by about 8:30 and head to the square. We end up going to the forbidden city instead. But man what a rigmarole! We only have card, so Malcolm stands in one line to be told wrong line. Then next line to be told no card! The 2 ATM we find don't take our card. Finally we try a different card and get some cash. New line and tick...

Monday 21 September The bed is very hard! My arm goes numb regularly in the night. We take our time getting ready and deciding what to do. We decide on the zoo. The most annoying thing about the subway is all the transfers. It takes ages to transfer from one to the next. Eventually we get there and get tickets into the zoo. We find an English map and head directly to the pandas. Initially the first panda is asleep but he ends up being quite the show animal walki...