Vincent had done well with the booking and managed to convince the guide to let us take all our luggage on the tour bus so we could head straight to the airport from the Olympic stadium which was close to the tube. We got up at 6.30am and repacked our bags trying to get them down to a minimum, we need to do another post home really but want to wait until we are somewhere warm and can pack the presents with our winter clothes. We grabbed an egg and chilli in brea...

After getting home last night Vincent had poured over maps of the tube system. Me being shattered, I simply fell asleep, typical. When we got up this morning Vincent said that he was able to get us to the temple of heaven and to the summer palace by tube, so no messing around with taxi drivers who were hard to come by then took you a long way round. We set off after breakfast, another disaster – no veggie stuff at all expect a boiled egg and they still wanted t...

The hotel were lovely and let us check in at 7.00am, we were very glad of a short time to sort the bags and get showered before we left for the forbidden city. The room might have had a view of it but they weren’t joking and behind our curtain was a wall! As Vincent pointed out a wall was in fact preferable as the Chinese are allergic to central heating, although we did have an AC unit it was all in Chinese and I opted for not fiddling in case I made it worse. ...