Day 4: I am writing this on the sleeper train from Beijing to Xian. We have our own two berth cabin and I am on top tonight!!! Lil is watching a film and says my socks smell. I say smell them in 3 months time!! We spent our last day in Beijing mopping up the sights including the Temple of Heaven which is not only a significant tourist attraction but also the place where the retired hang out and try their hand at singing, dancing and wrestling (the pictures sp...

The traffic in Beijing is terrible. The 70 mile trip to the Great Wall took 3 hours each way although it was worth going the extra distance to get to the Simatai section which is very quiet. We climbed the eastern section for 1.5 hours before heading back. The journey back down was significantly quicker as we took the flying fox down. I must have looked a right p**** as I lost the ability to jump and had to be pushed by the old lady running it!!!

Today we visited the site of some of the finest Anglo/Franco looting and burning as witnessed by Harry Flashman in Flashman and the Dragon. The Summer Palace has since been rebuilt and the Chinese have embraced world trade (the reluctance to trade with the English and French and allow an ambassador in Beijing was the cause for the vandalism). Anyway, the Summer Palace is truly amazing and I would say it's better than the Forbidden City (although it was sunny to...

23/09/08 The irony of leaving the UK just when everything is all credit crunch doom and gloom on a Credit Suisse sponsored break is not lost on us. In the spirit of the current fashion for thrift we even took the tube to T5. By the time we had got back from Kate and Dave's wedding and started to get ready it was 1am before we got to bed. I think in denial, Lil did not try to close her case until this morning which resulted in some emergency reprioritisation o...