Up and off and first call Bakery - had a danish and some cake and orange juice, a very good breakfast! Went straight to the Russian Embassy - and the trouble started. They said Claire cant get a tourist visa here and can only get a 10 day transit visa, but we are in russia for longer... anyway, we are seeing about our options and emailing and not panicking just yet! Annoying though. We even sought out the British Embassy, but they couldnt do anything to help.

Anyway, to take our mind off it all we took the underground out to the Birdcage Stadium and Cube, they were very impressive, they have their own specail Olympic underground line! They were still playing the song and selling the merchandise, even though it is all over, cashing in though. Hope we can pull off something as impressive.

Jumped back on the underground and went to the renowned shopping street, together with snack street. For tea i had a corn on the cob on a stick, 2 sticks of meat and then some little dumplings, which were the best! We could have tried snake or scorpions or starfish and seahorses, but we stuck to the 'normal' stuff and it was lovely. It got very cold when the sun went in so we headed back to the hostel. Did some emailing - Claire to embassies and me to Craig!

Downtown Beijing could really be any city in the world just about, there isnt really anything to make it stand out that we saw today... but it does have the forbidden city - which we are going to visit tomorrow!