J: We made it to Beijing City. We visited Tiananmen Square; where clearly the protesting there never really stops and the police security is impressive, although interestingly the Chinese clearly don't see us as a risk and just usher us through without a pat down. The Forbidden City is a stunning palace, which still has rooms with original furnishings untouched for hundreds of years. Next door is Jingshan Park, which is a beautiful park with a temple at the top, which has a beautiful view over looking the city.

S: So the first day we must have walked about 10 miles, I did get to see some amazing places. We walked down Beijing's 'Oxford Circus' as James nicknamed it. We obviously had to stop for a beer (which costs the same as water!) to sit and watch the world go by.

J: In our usual fashion we are finding local dens to eat in, even with the language barrier being a "slight" problem, through charades, photos, pointing at other peoples food and taking a lucky dip on the menus we have enjoyed some fantastic food including steamed dumplings, noodle soups and donkey/horse meat filled pastry things.

S: The funniest moment has been James trying to impersonate a pig for pork in a restaurant lol.

We also walked round the Houhai Lake, which was stunning. We chilled out, watching people swim, fish and cycle in the park. The Chinese are very active in their parks - its great to see.

So we have kinda found our niches. I do the research of where to go and James navigates. Apparently not always knowing your left and right hinders navigation so I'm told.

So you would think that I would choose the best places to go, oh no I completely stitched myself up by saying let's go to the night market. There you can eat some crazy stuff, which indeed we did. For first course we had snake, silk worms and octopus. Now the silk worms were soft on the inside and crunchy/leathery texture on the outside - hmm not to be repeated. We even tried to give them away to a beggar and even he wasn't keen. The snake and octopus was fine and in true Keeler style we needed a beer to wash this down with.

J: We also found to my excitement some scorpions and to my fear spiders! We skipped the spiders but both enjoyed the scorpions, crunchy and salty like a meaty crisp. There was one thing I don't know what we ate on a stick, but it tasted like liver with a crackling skin to it..... Could have been pig nose maybe?

S: So as we all know, James doesn't like to do things normally. He didn't want to visit the Great Wall of China with every other tourist; he wanted to go on his own. So after a little research I found a place to go that wasn't open to the public but could be walked. We had to take two bus journeys, now I'd been warned about the local touts wanting to get you off the buses early. Well true to form they did, I had spoken to a Chinese lady (Her English was a saving grace!!) and checked what stop to get off, when two stops early, two men get on saying to us, 'this is your stop get off, get off.' I replied no, and the whole bus erupted in laughter as they realised we weren't to be taken lightly. In the end they asked the lady next door to us, 'What her problem was??' as she was telling them off, ruing their quick buck ideas.

Finally after 3 hours we finally made it to the wall, we went looking for breakfast, as it was only 9.30 am. No cafés in sight - hmm slight problem, as the only place open was a run down butchers. So we sat on one of the most iconic places of history eating Ritz biscuits with garlic sausage!! Best I've ever had lol.

J: Sam did me proud in finding that part of the Great Wall, it started out restored and gave a real idea to what it was like, it's a lot bloody steeper than I imagined, I was not chuffed when I had to go back down to get the bottle of water I left at the last look-out-post.

After a couple miles the wall started to deteriorate and became rather iffy to walk along and at times we were climbing. At one point we had to climb on the outside of the wall, hanging over the edge and in through a turret window..... I was instructing Sam to "keep 3 points of contact at all times" as even I was concerned. Most of the wall after this didn't even have sides, surprisingly we didn't see anybody else until we finished which was brilliant and I loved being on the Great Wall. We walked for over 5 hours in total, 3 of which without water - oops.

S: The next day we visited the Temple Of Heaven, and spent most of the day wondering around, and chilling. The temple itself is the largest circular wooden structure in China and where they started the torch relay for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. There was also a rose garden, which we sat by eating and reading our books, as it was so beautiful and peaceful.