Yesterday, we went to a park called Beihai Park which contains a huge lake and has an Island in the middle. After walking all of the way to the park which took around 2 hours (much longer than first thought!!) we decided that the best way to see the park was to hire a little electric boat in stead of walking. It was great fun and we saw much more than walking. We then went on to the island (called Jade Island) which was full of little temples leading up to a big ...

Yesterday we finally checked out of our first, underground hostel, and moved to another nicer one. Further from The Forbidden city and Tiananmen Square, but closer to the station and with no shortage of sights to see! We then went to Tiananmen Square for a while, and walked right round. We only got there in the afternoon, by which time the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall was shut. The Square itself is apparently the largest open urban square in the world, but didn't s...

We arrived in Beijing yesterday morning and found our hostel very easily (we took a taxi!) We were very jetlagged so only went for a small walk before dinner and going to bed. A combination of the jetlag and the hostel being 4 storeys underground resulted in us sleeping in until 3 pm today! Given that we went to bed at 9pm the previous night, that's a lot of sleep! We didn't have much time to do stuff today after that, so we decided to leave the forbidden city t...