Hi, Well today unfortunately has to be one of the most disappointing days of our whole trip! We went to the Great Wall of China - very cool obviously- but unfortunatley it was really really foggy and you could only see about 10 steps in front of you! We should have been able to see the Wall disappearing off into the distance of the hills. Unfortunately we could barely see the person in front of us! We could see nothing off either side and couldn't even see up to the next section of wall to see how many steps we had to contend with! We walked up the wall quite a way but in the end gave up because it all looked the same- ie foggy! The rest of the day was suitably random as a lot of our day trips seem to be! We thought we would be on a tour group but we ended up with just me and Caroline in a car with a driver and a guide called Victor. Our itinerary said the Ming Tombs and the Great Wall. The Ming Tombs were quite interesting but a bit disturbing as it was where the Emperors used to be buried. Their coffins could only be closed from the inside so one or several poor slaves had to go in the coffin with the Emperor, shut the door to the coffin and be buried alive - nice repay for loyal service! What our itinerary did not mention was the fact that we would be driven round to loads of random factories where we would be shown the wares and basically given the hard sell! We ended up in a jade factory, a porcelain factory, a tea house and a silk factory. By the silk factory we were already annoyed about our crap wall experience so we were having a serious sense of humour failure! In case any of you were wondering there are at least 9 million bicycles in Beijing! And they all try and run you over ! Even worse, Chinese people have no problem with just spitting all over the place! And worse than that the little kids wear funny open bummed trousers so they can wee in the streets- nice! Anyway this sounds a bit negative but we managed to laugh our way through the trip and it has definitley been an experience so i'm not unhappy! xxx