Aternoon all, been a fairly quiet day here coz we're leaving Beijing this evening and had to pack this morning. Just been for a bit of a stroll in the park behind the Forbidden City. There's a hill that we walked up where we could look down and right across the Forbidden City, or at least we could have done but today is really smoggy so the visability is terrible. We sat for a while writing postcards and diaries etc and Chinese people kept coming up to look at us...

After meeting a couple of Americans that live in Beijing we set off to visit the lama temple..... which is the most beautiful example of a Buddhist temple in Beijing(to quote the tour guide)!! We got off the subway and decided to try some local pancakes for breakfast..... They were DELICIOUS..... we'll definately be going back for some more of them!! While eating our pancakes we managed to somehow bump into a couple of Danish girls for the 3rd time in 3 days!!!...

Not even sure where to begin with todays blog! To begin with i'm far too tired to write anything coz we've been up since 5am so i just feel like jumping straight into bed. Anyway... This morning started with a 4 hour bus trip to Simatai on the outskirts of Beijing where we were dropped off at the bottom of a valley that lead up to the first section of the Great Wall. From there we trekked for about 20 minutes up the side of the mountain to the summit where we r...

Evenin all! Well, it is here anyway so we've just settled down to a game of scrabble and a few beers. Gonna have to make it a quick one this time i'm afraid coz it's coming up to my turn and i've got some good letters... Been to the Summer Palace today, had planned to go earlier in the week but our sleeping patterns have made it a bit a difficult! Anyway it was well worth the wait; anyone who's been watching Around the World in 80 Gardens might have seen it alr...

Hi Everyone, Well - today didn't exactly work out as planned. We intended to get up early an go to the Summer Palace an walk round the gardens but got up late an by the time we got to the bus stop it was 12. So we decided to do what any god fearing english tourist would do - go shopping for fake clothes! We found some amazing knock offs an spent literally the entire day there. Shopping in a Beijing market really is a totally new experience. The constant scr...