Hi everyone back home, we've finally managed to get online to update our blog for the first time! It's been a bit of a crazy couple of days already and there's quite a few stories to be told so i'll try to keep it brief...

The flight over here was long and sleepless (and delayed!) but we managed to keep ourselves entertained with travel-scrabble and constant trips to the snack bar for beer/wine/vodka-miniatures & various bits of junk food!

We arrived at Beijing's brand new terminal...Very BIG & very very impressive! Got a bus into inner Beijing to the Subway where we had a minor issue with the contents of "someones" rucksack, but after some broken-Mandarin translation and a lot of hand waving we got through to the subway line to take us to the hostel.

Can't quite believe how much attention we receive from the locals; it's almost as if we're famous, and they're not the slightest bit subtle with their long gazes and even picture taking!

Got to the hostel at about 3pm local time and spent a couple of dazed & sleepy hours looking round the local area before finally giving in to the lack of sleep and crashing-out just before 7pm...hardcore!

11 hours sleep later and we're into the first full day in Beijing (non of us quite believing we're here yet). We got the subway to Tian'anmen Square and headed for the Forbidden City. It must be so obvious that we don't have a clue what we're doing because people keep coming up to us to ask if we need help. We had a really friendly local lady show us around the subway this morning on her way to work!

Soon after walking through the main gates of the Forbidden City we were accosted by several tour guides offering their services. After much deliberation we decided to take one up on his offer. So off we went round the Forbidden City with our own personal guide (Jack) who led us through a labyrinth of corridors and across numerous courtyards past the most amazing traditional Chinese temples and palaces any of us have ever seen! One of the highlights was at the end of the tour when we were led through to, what was essentially, the emperor's back garden, which was like a secret garden from a farytale full of giant-bonzai trees, strange boulder collections and mini temples.

After a lot of walking round the Forbidden City we trekked off into downtown Beijing for a look around the chop-stick shops and random meat stalls (not yet brave enough to try the scorpion on a stick!) Came across a photographer who wanted to take our picture for a magazine. This then attracted the attention of a few other locals who must have though we were important/famous/"very handsome" and proceeded to take pictures of us on their camera phones...weird!

There's also been a couple of occasions where people have come up to us on the street to "practice their English" but we've been a bit wary of them when they lead you off the main street to backstreet coffee-shops. Apparently it's some kind of ploy to get us to buy them food! Cheeky!

That's about everything in a nut-shell for now, but the main thing is we're safe, warm-ish and having a great time. Will post again as soon as we can. love to everyone from Beijing x x x