What a day we had today.... but firstly, Happy Birthday Craig!We all got early today as we had trips planned today, Emma & Jane headed off to visit some pandas and the rest of us headed off to the local bus station to catch a bus to the Huashan Mountains. After catching a bus to the main bus terminal we sat on our bus for about 45 mins waiting for it to fill up before we could leave. About 45 minutes into our journey we hit a major traffic jam so our bus driver...

We arrived at Xi'an in the rain at around 09:30 and we met by the mini bus from the hostel and were taken back to drop our bags off and have some breakfast. The breakfast was not as nice as the previous hostel but they did manage to serve it to us within a few minutes and all together unlike the previous hostel that would take over 30 mins sometimes. Showers then followed and a quick change of clothes.The plan was to walk around the city with Roy so that we...

I did set my alarm for 4am just so I could get up, walk along some of the wall and see the sunrise at 6:30am but when I opened my curtains in the hotel room all I could see was fog. I would have really liked to have got some nice pictures of the wall at sunrise, but the few extra hours sleep that I got instead were really good too.We returned back to Beijing in the morning and were dropped off at the Silk Market and told to be back here in 7 hours so that we cou...

Today was our first trip away from Beijing, so we had an early start beginning with a 3 hour bus trip out of the city and over to the Great Wall of China where we would complete an 11km walk along the wall. The weather forecast for today was rubbish and leaving Beijing it was pouring down so we were all expecting a 5 hour trek along the wall in the rain.We got to the drop off point for the bus, which was all a bit commercialised with souvenir shops and a ticket ...

There was nothing planned today and we were left to our own devices, so Jane, Emma and I headed over to Tiananmen Square as others had been here previously, and much to our amazement it was closed off to the public for some reason by the police and army. We took a couple of pictures of the square from across the road and then joined the crowds on the way up to the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City was absolutely huge with load of different buildings which all ...