We had our first experience of sleeping on a train...it was noisy, had a smelly toilet, hard bed and a driver that liked to slam on the brakes through out the night, almost rolling me out of the top bunk! We did however meet a funny australian couple in the next room who could relate to the experiences and cultural differences we had encounted.

The train arrived over an hour late in to Beijing, it would seem none of our transport has departed/arrived at the correct time in China, fingers crossed for Japan. After leaving the station we could not find our guide or driver anywhere and the station was huge, so we called the emergency contact and they got us to move to another part of the station and wait. Still no guide or driver so we called again and were advised to move to another part. We were then given the guides number to contact but he was waiting at the hotel for us as he had arranged a late breakfast/early lunch for our arrival. Eventually we found our driver, only 45 mins after we arrived, he spoke limited English but was the happiest Chinese man I had ever met!

On arriving at the hotel we were served a bacon, egg, tomato, real cheese and real ham all in one sandwich...unusual but it was very nice. We then had a quick shower before meeting back with our guide so we coud rearrange the itinerary due to the late start. We decided to see the Temple of Heaven and Summer Palace and the tour would include dinner as we missed breakfast. Our new guide James seemed very friendly and remindedus of TinTin's bestfriend...Snowie.

The Temple of heaven is a huge temple in a lovely park that was used by the emperor to pray for a good harvest. Most of the temple has been restored and the surrounding park is used by locals for dancing, exercise and badminton. We then drove to the Summer palace, this was built as a 60th birthday present for the Dowager (Emperor's mother). The huge lake was man made and the clay dug out for the lake was used to create a hill where a large temple stood. The building's decoration and symbolism was very interesting although it would seem everything had a connection to longevity, we began to think it was Snowie's catch phrase, several days on it is still a running joke.

After a walk round the summer palace grounds we took a drive to see the olymic park and hotel shaped like a dragon. I was keen to see this as a comparision to the London olympic park and I have to say the China aquatics centre was cooler, as was the dragon shaped hotel! Dinner was nearby the olympic park before a transfer back to our hotel, for a night of washing. All the moving around has created a pile up of laundry and we are beginning to run low on clean pants!