Hello everyone,

Hope you are all well? This blog is going to be slightly less long winded than the last one! We decided our day to day activities would become a bit too boring since some days we just play pool, eat and drink!

Alison: The last few days of Beijing were fun. We started to get a bit more ambitious with our food choices. We found a nice little restaurant with cheap delicious food. Paid about 3 pound for a meal with a couple of beers. The place is slightly ruined in my memory though because on the last day we ate there I found a caterpillar in my noodles :-( I thought it was a bit of iceberg lettuce and almost popped it in! Not nice. The Great Wall was amazing. An 8km walk along a lesser known section. Spectacular views but quite scary at times. We had to climb up some very steep sections with no special equipment and there were some big drops we tried not to notice. Well worth the terror though! Some parts of the wall were being restored and Nigel even tried to muck in a little bit to say he was involved in the construction of the Great Wall of China :-) We also visited a night market that displayed all sorts of culinary delights....various insects, star fish, sheep testicle and penis. We didn't fancy going all 'I'm a Celebrity' so we just stuck with a couple of lamb kebabs and some noodles. The Olympic Stadium was a pretty cool day out. We met a Chinese mother and daughter who were overwhelmed with excitement to be talking to 2 English people. They wanted photos with us and to practice their English. They were very sweet until they asked if they could spend the rest of the day with us......we made a sharp exit! It's weird over here. People stare at you all the time and shout hello. Had quite a few photo requests! Beijing was a nice place to visit but you wouldn't want to stay there long. I was relieved to be getting on the train to Pingyao.........

Nigel: So we boarded the night train ready to go down to Pingyao. The train cost about 17 pound which was cheap as it was also our accomadation for the night aswell. When we got onto the train we had great difficulty on getting on the bed, as we had the top bed of a set of 3, we had to climb a ladder to get up there. Once we were up there we had very little room as it right next to the ceiling and a wall one side and a 8ft drop the next. We arrived in Pingyao the next day at about 7:30, but with little sleep. The weather had turned and it was raining, but we cant complain as it was the first rain we had seen rain since arriving.

The town and hostel that we are staying in is very nice and very tradtional, which lends its way to why there are lots of tourists and prices are not as cheap as they could be, but none the less still cheap in comparision to Uk prices. There is a wall that goes round the perimeter of the town which your able to walk round and see Pingyou from a height. Included in the price of the ticket, there are several other places of intrest that you are able to see, spreaded around the town. Out of the 27 places, we seen about 10 which was plenty, as they did start to repeat them selves. We have booked another night sleeper train for Monday night and we are going to a place called Xian. The hostel we are staying at doesn't allow for USB connections so we will post the pictures when we get to the next hostel.

Take care

Alison & Nigel

PS cant belive Kev managed to retain the trophy. (Can some one send me Mike' s & Amanda's email address)