Ni hao!!! We are currently just chilling in the hostel bar. It's 11pm so bed time soon! The flight from Dubai to Beijing wasn't great. We have a row of 3 for the 2 of us so you'd have thought it'd be easy to sleep but no, I could not get comfy whatsoever! More good food and I watched Beauty and the Beast which was very pleasant! We had a little difficulty trying to work out how to get to the hostel. We asked the tourist information at the airport to write the address of the hostel in Chinese for the taxi driver (but not all of them spoke English) and then we needed a middle man to agree a price for the taxi. He dropped us off at the end of a hutong (alley) pointing down it but it was a good 10 minute walk from there. We also had a little kid jumping up and down pointing at us to his dad an numerous other people staring so we must have looked well Western or they thought we dressed stupidly!!
The hostel is very basic but we have wifi and our own bathroom so can't complain. We had a little nap, watched a bit of Chinese X Factor which was amazing then went down to the bar for a drink and something to eat. We ended up making some dumplings though with the staff which was fun! We thought they'd offer them round afterwards and they looked really tasty but they didn't!! All the staff went off and came back with bowls eating them so we had to order some along with some beef noodles. The dumplings were so nice. The noodles were a bit messy as they were like a soup so not really something to share!
We're going to go to Tiananmen Square and a few other places tomorrow, plus find that all important Peking duck and to enquire about watching United somewhere on Wednesday! Night night
P.S. 1 litre of beer worked out as £1. The hostel bar may become a favourite!!
P.P.S. When paying for our meal they didn't charge us for the dumplings as we helped make them so I take it all back!