Well we've continued our exploration and have now been to see the temple of heaven park. This too was fairly large so we made our way round slowly in the heat and took several breaks. We've also returned to tiananmen square the last couple of nights as we've discovered it's really quite relaxing to sit there as it gets dark and watch the people flying kites or roller-blading. On the down side though it's getting really annoying that people keep stopping to watch us from literally just a few feet away, rather like we're some kind of zoo animal, just without an actual cage. Ah well, we'll just continue to ignore it.

The next stage of our trip ran smoothly and we are now in our second hotel and have met our group for the vodkatrain so we know what we're doing and where we're going when. There aren't many other people so not many names to learn and everyone seems really nice. So basically all is well so far! Off to see part of the great wall tomorrow, then we leave for mongolia on tuesday morning, at 6:20am unfortunately!