Hello Again,

So its our last day in Beijing and I thought best to update you on what we had been doing these past couple of days.

Last time I wrote we were off for a wander before meeting our tour group. We met our group that night and headed out for a group meal to get to know each other better. Our group has some lovely people in it from Oz, Ireland, and Norway. There was one more to join our group from Germany but the German was late and arrived after our meal. During our first group meal our tour leader Frank ordered our food for us to help ease us into the types of food we would be eating.

The meat dishes are very similar to what we would eat at home but there is a much wider variety of veg dishes. We had broccoli which was really yummy and I tried a whole variety of different things. Miss Wegs you would be proud. I am being very good about trying lots of new foods. I am also getting the hang of chop-sticks!

The next day we were up to meet the group at 8am to go to the Great Wall. It was an hour and half journey to the Great Wall from our hotel. Lucky for me I slept on Darren's shoulder the whole way and woke up just as we arrived. Go me! You can get a cable car to the top of the wall but our group decided to walk up to the top to make it more of an adventure. At the top you could either go left or right. Left was steep, right was steeper. Me being me decided right sounded like a challenage. However I started to realise why this was the much steeper route when I saw that a lot of the stairs were almost vertical and it was quite a struggle the higher we got up. We took some amazing photos and it was quite an incredible feeling to be on the Wall with all its history. The higher you get the more you can see the wall for miles and miles into the distance. It weaves all through the mountain- it is just an incredible sight to see. Both of our legs were slowly turning to jelly from all the stairs and how steep they were. I was determined to get to the point on the wall where they is a sign that says you can not walk any further. It was quite hard but we made it. It was such a great feeling to know we made it and kept going. The closer we got the less people there seemed to be. Walking back down was just as tricky as walking up. Most of the stairs dont have hand rails and I had to be very careful about navigating my way down. I was a little worried about falling and taking Darren out as I bounced to the bottom of the stairs but I was ok. Phew. The best part was you have to get a toboggan chute down. Brilliant fun. You sit on your little toboggan and go as fast or slow as you like. It took about 5 minutes to get to the bottom as it is very long. Darren and I went to get a yummy hot chocolate before meeting the group for lunch. Again the food was great and I tried lots of new dishes.

That night we headed out to see a show. Before the show we went to a local style of restuarant this meant the food was different to that of other places we had eaten in. There was a chicken dish that was full of red chilly's. I ate a fair bit of it but oh my life my mouth felt like it was on fire. We also all tried firewater. This is the traditional Chinese drink. It is 46% so you only have a tiny bit at a time. Taste likes Vodka, it has a very hairspray taste to it. Darren liked it, I wasn't so keen- I dont like neat shots of Vodka (unless its the pram race ;) After this we headed to the show. The show was called the Legend of Kung Fu. We had to use the metro for the first time. It cost 2Yuan, thats 20p in English. More importantly that's for however many stops you want. Its very cheap and our meals at night and lunch were coming to about 4 squidoodle each as well! Beer is about 40p. Anywyas back to the show. The show was great. Lots of Kung Fu- shock- moves and some acrobatics as well. We really enjoyed it but were feeling pretty shattered. I had to elbow Darren a couple of times. It was really great to see an authentic Chinese show. I think we both crawled into bed that night form being so shattered. Neither of us were looking forward to waking up the next morning and seeing how sore our legs were. Our room is nice though. A lot bigger than we both thought with an amazing shower and a sitting toilet. The toilet situation is interesting. Most of the toilets are squatting ones but as long as you have tissues on you- you're ok.

The next day we headed off to Tioman Square. This is a sqaure where the parlimentry building is. Then to the the Forbidden City. It is a huge palace where the Emperors lived. kinda like Buckingham Palace for us but our Royal line still lives there. It looks a lot more like the China I imagined from seeing pictures. What I mean is it was a big traditional building. Well lots of buildings really. However once you have seen one layer of the palace you have really seen them all as they are identitcal. One thing I did notice was how bloody rude the chinese are. Oh my life seriously, I wandered up to look at something and they were acting like animals. They were shoving people out the way with not a care for anyone else. It was crazy. It took me about 5 min of abuse before I got annoyed and stuck my elbows out. I gave up being polite and English-they clearly had no respects for other people. Anyway after that annoyance we headed in to the garden. Now if you imagine the palace to be all made out of stone with huge traidtional building everywhere all spaced out (the palace has 1800 rooms for goodness sake), then the garden is the fresh air that breathes into the palace. Its lovely with huge trees everywhere, rocks and ponds with little fishes. It was my favourite part of the palace. There is also a tree there called the 'Couple Tree'. Back in the day the Emperor and Emperess stood in front of the tree on their wedding day. If you stand in front of it and have your picture taken, you're meant to have a happy marriage. The 2 trees looks fantastic as the branches have intertwinned with each other and the trunks lean forward. It looks like they are trying to embrace each other. All of the group had a picture taken in front of the tree. We have also mastered the chinese technique of just jumping in. We were all over it and getting very quick.

After the city we headed to a noodle restaurant for lunch. Darren and I were eager to attempy ordereing for ourselves but sadly the group started to back down and decided to get Frank to order for us again. This made us sad as we wanted to ordered our own food. We had some great dishes again and also got to mix the vegtable etc we wanted into our own bowl of noodles. The noodles were ok but they werent as yummy as some of the other things we had eaten. We had broccoli again- I love it.

After lunch we headed for a tour on a rick-shaw which is a traditional bike that you ride round the city in. It is basically like a tuk tuk where you have someone riding the bike and you are in a little carriage at the back. We had a nice little ride around the city and headed to a traditional house to see what they lived like. After this we got on a bus back to our hotel. The bus is cheap as chips too. Once back we went to get some snacky bits for dinner before heading back to our room. We were both feeling pretty shattered and decided to have a quiet night.

And that my friends brings me to today. We are about to head off to the Temple of Heaven before meeting up with our group to try Peking Duck. Then we board an overnight sleeper train to Shanghai- We are on it for 14 hours. Whoo hoo :(

Love Sarah-Louise and Darren xx

P.s Photo uploaded is ridiculously slow. Will try again somewherew else.