17/07/07:- We finally after bagging some seats on the train arrive in Beijing at around 4pm. We find a semi nice hotel (free transfer); we look around town and have some dinner (saw dog on the menu....argh!). Walked up to Tian ánmen square where we watched people fly their kites. Wondered back through the muggy night and bedded down.

18/07/07:- Up and headed for a buffet breakie joint that we had spotted, had far too many helpings as usual, rolled out and hired bikes for the day (v. healthy). Very scary cycling around town to the Forbidden City.

The Forbidden City is huge, with so many 1,000's of buildings we managed to walk through it in just over two hours. Some many cool treasures and history of the Emperors. It is a very hot day and my stomach ahs been painful since this morning (Dave tries to blame it on the buffet breakfast....check!). So I head back to the hotel and Dave goes out and explores the lake and the town.When he is back I feel slightly better so we venture out to the late night market after dropping off the bikes.

We had dinner at a really funky bar and hostel called "Susuka" whose motto is life is backpacking, a wicked perk up and cool grub, then we strolls back to the hotel.

19/07/07:- We try a different place for breakfast this morning and go Swiss with a delicious hot chocolate.....it's the smaller things that you really miss! As it is around 11am when we are done we opt for taking in more of the local sights and leave the Great Wall until tomorrow.

So we head for the Summer Palace. It had some amazing grounds which takes us four hours to walk through, lots of bridges and a massive lake which you could boat over and cheat a little but seeing as though there was a little overcast and a cool breeze we decided to do the whole lot. When approaching the Palace we come across that our tickets are only covering the admission into the grounds where as to see the Palace its more. We have come across this a lot in this country....never mind.

We he head to the Temple of Heaven which was closed after paying for a ticket, so we had an expensive look around the grounds. We then had Chinese for dinner (which seems to be brought our back to front soup after your main). We then come back for a ridiculously early rise to climb the Great Wall.

20/07/07:- Up and out for 6:30am we visit the breakfast buffet again and hop on the train and coach to the Great Wall...Wow! The size of the wall is beyond anything we have seen before.The wall is restored for tourists to climb, but if you walk/climb far enough which we did you reach a part which is original wall. The new one stands since 1959. We take many many snaps, my legs can barely stand from the views of ups and downs so what's once was there is now jelly. The sweat coming off me has reached an embarrassing level! There are 60yrs olds pushing passed me...how!!!

Five hours of climbing and then we reach 'The Bear garden" to which we hoped was a typo and there would be a tall cold pint awaiting our victory at the end, however no such luck, sadly it was were these adorable bears including cubs were kept in the sweltering heat for entertainment of feeding by the tourists and so on. We think some had just gone mad as they were just rocking back and forth.

We fell asleep on the way back from exhaustion. We were hoping to make it to the Ming Tombs but the wall took up too much time. We have dinner back in town (Dave eventually samples some Beijing duck. We head for a beer and use the internet. We try and ring home, I get a two second message as the phone malfunctions of "Hi it's me"...how frustrating.