So… We were now left on our own to fend for ourselves. Some of our group had left already to get back home, Sjofn had gone to spend a few days with her friend in another part of Beijing and Dan had a few days left before continuing his travels. After moving from our lovely 4 star hotel (which we were becoming accustomed to) we headed over the road to the cheaper hostel. Clean and comfortable and it only had to service us for another 3 nights so all was good.

We set about a gruelling 3 days seeing everything else that we wanted to see before heading home after nearly 18 months away.

We started off by meeting up with Dan and going to where all the hip young and trendy artists hang out. We went to Factory 798 in the Dashanzi art district. "798" is located in the Dashanzi area, to the northeast of central Beijing.It is the site of state-owned factories built with Soviet communist money and German ex Nazi orchestral style including Factory 798, which originally produced electronics. Beginning in 2002, artists and cultural organizations began to divide, rent out, and re-make the factory spaces, gradually developing them into galleries, art centres, artists' studios, design companies, restaurants, and bars. We spent a lot of time wandering around looking through bookshops, photography exhibitions "installations" and general artwork a plenty before spending a small fortune of some trumped up European food because the hunger had hit Katie and she couldn't wait. The area was definitely the scene to be seen in and we were treated to our first glimpse of Chinese street art and paste-ups which is entirely against the communist way. Although the place was home to some great art our pockets would not stretch to $100,000US for an original Yue Minjun and the temperature had soared to the high 30's so we decided to take an air conditioned taxi to the air conditioned subway to try and cool down. We said our goodbyes to Dan and headed back to our hostel to have a siesta before hitting the crazy nightly food markets to find something different to eat.

Once the sun had firmly retreated and the temperature had subsided we wandered to get some dinner which would hopefully be cheaper than the extortionate lunch prices in the art district. We had heard rumours that on Donghuamen streets is where you can try everything from traditional Chinese and Muslim food to scorpions, seahorses and a plethora of different larvae on sticks. Now I was all fired up to try some scorpion or even a larvae or two but seeing the poor things there skewered through there abdomen, still alive, waiting to be plunged in the hot oil I soon changed my mind. Surely you could kill the food before skewering it.

The stall owners are very keen to get you to try their particular brand of noodle or rice and the proprietors of the glazed fruit kebab stalls were the pushiest. They shouted at us and thrust these sharpened skewers full of fruit dripping in rapidly hardening molten sugar in your face. If you are not on the ball it is easy to loose an eye from a swift fruit kebab parry.

The next day it was time to tick another box in our eye-spy Beijing book. We were off to the other side of the city to visit the Olympic park. This was of course as easy as pie due to the fact that it was in Beijing and therefore new and hyper organised travel systems had been installed taking you directly to the Olympic park with clear and concise directions and signage all the way there. The park or Olympic Green to give it its official title is home to the famous Birdsnest stadium and the Water Cube building along with the slightly less impressive convention centre and various open fields for the hockey and other suchlike activities. When we came out of the station the first thing that you see is the impressive Ling Long Pagoda which in Chinese means the Delicate Tower. My initial impression is that the 128m 3 sided steel tower made from sharp angular metal is not particularly delicate but is certainly impressive.

We wandered from here along the neatly planted colourful pathways to the Birdsnest. The smoggy grey and dirty skies were quite evocative of the general upkeep of the stadium. Bearing in mind that it was only 9 months since the Olympics, the paint had already stated to peel and the up close to the structure you could see a constant black sheen on top of all the members as Beijing's skies dropped its dirty smog on the stadium.

The water cube wasn't faring much better. The many panels on the outside were looking a bit grubby and some of the paint had peeled off of the welcome sign. Saying all this though the park and the buildings are impressive to see and are still attracting a lot of tourists with 90% of them being Chinese. The upkeep on the Birdsnest is $9million a year and it doesn't look like the money raised from the two events they have booked in 2009 will be able to support this so there are rumours that the stadium is going to be turned into a shopping and entertainment complex in 3 to 5 years.

During our visit we were of course stared at, and at one point we were asked to appear in what seemed to be a family photo. We had to stand in the middle of a Chinese family whilst they gathered in around us and had their photos (yes, more than one camera) taken with the strange westerners!

After a quick lunch at a Korean restaurant (we ordered the Chinese food in there so as to be certain we were not eating Fido) we headed to the Beijing Curio City to get some souvenirs and we had heard that this was the best place to go if you didn't want to be hassled into buying things. After some heavy browsing and realising that nearly everything in there was a true Chinese antique and therefore well out of our budget we started to leave the place when I spotted some original 50's communist propaganda. After some hardcore bargaining we walked out with a rice-paper poster of two huge red muscular communist fists crushing the bourgeoisie below. I was happy with this purchase but Katie wasn't so sure!

The next day (the penultimate day of our travels) we decided to do some serious souvenir shopping and set out with a plan of what we wanted and where we were going to get it. We headed out to the other side of the city to explore the more classy souvenir places that are hidden in and amongst the Hutongs. In Beijing, hutongs are alleys formed by lines of siheyuan, traditional courtyard residences. Many neighbourhoods were formed by joining one siheyuan to another to form a hutong, and then joining one hutong to another. Since the mid-20th century, the number of Beijing hutongs has dropped dramatically as they are demolished to make way for new roads and buildings. More recently, some hutongs have been designated as protected areas in an attempt to preserve this aspect of Chinese cultural history. Now since the new influx of tourists in the lead up to the games and after the enterprising in Beijing have started to turn the Hutongs into trendy Soho/Camden-esque places with flaky hippy bars and art shops. It was amongst these that we managed to hone our haggling. We realised that if you really aren't bothered whether you buy something or not it can help. Take your lowest price that you want to pay and as they start the bargaining process just stick to it. I managed to buy a copy of Chairman Mao's little red book of quotations for 20yuan where I had previously seen it advertised for 150yuan. More communist stuff to Katies despair! It was when we were looking for some original Chinese artwork that we first spotted a picture of a child in black and white playing a game of cats cradle with a red string. This string is stretched between her fingers in a star (again some mild but ironically meant propaganda there). We immediately decided that we had to have one of these pictures. They were reproductions paintings done by a famous artist called Zhu Yi Yong. We searched around and found another couple of art shops selling these and started to think that we could play them off against each other. The three shops were nowhere near each other and it wasn't until we had spent about 3 hours traipsing around that we decided we were going to buy the picture from the first shop we saw it in. Surprise surprise we managed to get it for half the price she originally wanted and we were very happy. That just left us to enjoy a wood fired pizza and a beer in with the fashionistas in a Hutong.

Finally the day had arrived, our last full day in China and, with that, our last day before heading back to the UK to get back into the rat-race and prepare for the arrival of Frank the Foetus. What better way to relax then going to the Summer Palace.

The Summer Palace started out life as the Garden of Clear Ripples in 1750 (Reign Year 15 of Emperor Qianlong). Artisans reproduced the garden architecture styles of various palaces in China. Kunming Lake was created by extending an existing body of water to imitate the West Lake in Hangzhou. The palace complex suffered two major attacks--during the Anglo-French allied invasion of 1860 (with the Old Summer Palace also ransacked at the same time), and during the Boxer Rebellion, in an attack by the eight allied powers in 1900. The garden survived and was rebuilt in 1886 and 1902.

In December 1998, UNESCO included the Summer Palace on its World Heritage List. It declared the Summer Palace "a masterpiece of Chinese landscape garden design. The natural landscape of hills and open water is combined with artificial features such as pavilions, halls, palaces, temples and bridges to form a harmonious ensemble of outstanding aesthetic value." This recommendation and the fact that our guide book said that the cooling breezes from the surrounding lakes make it a perfect place to escape the stifling heat was all we need to get us onto the airconditioned subway and over to the palace.

We arrived at we thought was the entrance and we soon greeted the obligatory ticket booth. After paying to get in we took a walk over the impressive 17 arch bridge to the temples in the middle of the lake. We weren't exactly on our own on our little spiritual quest. The place was absolutely packed so it wasn't long before we walked away from the madding crowds to take a far more sedate walk around the perimeter of the park. We took in the western walkway that crosses over the lake, through the parklands and finally after a couple of hours walking our trek lead us up to longevity hill.

On its southern slope, Longevity Hill is adorned with an ensemble of grand buildings: The Cloud-Dispelling Hall, the Temple of Buddhist Virtue, and the Sea of Wisdom Temple form a south-north (lakeside - peak) oriented axis which is flanked by various other buildings. In the centre of the Temple of Buddhist Virtue stands the Tower of Buddhist Incense (Fo Xiang Ge), which forms the focal point for the buildings on the southern slope of Longevity Hill. The tower is built on a 20-meter-tall stone base, is 41 meters high with three stories and supported by eight ironwood pillars. The temperature was well up into the high thirties by now so after a vastly over priced lunch of mircrowaved noodles with meat?! we decided to climb the hill. Looking around the temples was awe inspiring but not awe inspiring enough for Katie to summon up her last bit of energy to climb to the top! I went on a solo mission to have a look from the temple of Buddhist incense over sprawling Beijing and it was then that it hit me that we were heading home the next day.

We took the subway back to our hostel and packed the rest of our belongings into our packs for the last time. At 4:15am our cab picked us up and whisked us silently through sleeping Beijing towards the airport. In less than 16 hours time we would be back in the UK and ready for lifes next challenge. The arrival of Frank whatever he/she may be.