Wow! Another day in Beijing, another unbelieveable experience! Started off with breakfast at a local diner, courtesy of our room-mate "Saint" or "The Saint" as he's quickly become known! The Saint then took us to the bus stop and arranged for some random guy to escort us on our journey on the world's most crowded bus, and then tell us where to get off! Obviously the Saint speaks much better Chinese than we do since he's from Taiwan but he had other plans today so couldn't look after us on the bus journey. Don't think any of us have ever seen so many people packed onto one bus, there are clearly no such things as health and safety regulations in this country!

So after about 30 minutes on the cattle truck we arrived outside what-we-thought was the Temple of Heaven...only to realise shortly after that we were infact looking at the "China Mobile" head office. A brief 180 degree about-turn and we saw a sign for the ticket office leading up to the main gate. We went for the expensive all-inclusive tickets and tourist guide map which set us back a staggering ₤2.50

The walk up to the first gate consisted of a peaceful tree lined avenue with several paths leading off it to various parts of the palace grounds. We chose the first one that looked interesting and followed it down to a small group of Chinese style pavillions where there were groups of people exercising, playing card games and generally chilling out in the sun (forgot to mention it was very sunny today, not seen a single cloud!)

After a short time taking in the goings-on we moved on past a couple of other impressive looking palace buildings towards the main Temple that appeared occasionally through the trees. Once we'd made our way along a very long and impressive walkway up to the Temple we passed through a group of decorated arches and into the open courtyard that surrounds the main Palace Building. You can probably see from the pictures how amazing the Temple is so i won't even attempt to describe how intricately painted and stunning it looked as i could't even begin to do it justice!

We spent about an hour wandering around the Temple and sitting in the sun admiring it from every conceiveable angle before begrudgingly moving on to look around the rest of the grounds.

Dave's bought a springy thing with feathers attached that resembles a giant shuttle c*** which we kicked around for a while as we remebered when we saw the big temple and headed towards the exit where we each indulged in a giant beef pot-noodle for lunch.

On our long long walk back to the subway (we decided to avoid the bus for the return journey!) we passed Tian'anmen Square which was open today (having been closed yesterday) so we took the opportunity to take a few douzen photos of the surrounding buildings with the blazing sun as an impressive backdrop, and what looked to be a blazing building in the distance too...arty!

So that leads us up to now...sat at the computer trying to update the blog / upload pictures / book another hostel in xi'an / find a suitable train out of Beijing on Saturday! We're all really tired but trying our best to overcome the temptation to go straight to bed.

I hear the weather back home hasn't been great; obviously we're very sorry to hear this and we'll be thinking of you all when its warm and sunny here tomorrow and we're strolling around the Summer Palace smug as a bug in a silk rug!!!