Today is Nicks birthday, I have arranged for us to stay in a nice hotel for a few days to celebrate (because I know this is what Nick really wants for his birthday - me I am happy staying in hostels!!) Now some of you will know that it is a tradition to put up the Xmas tree on Nicks birthday so I arranged with the hotel to get a tree put up in the lobby for him and I have too say they have done quite a good job! Spent the afternoon in the hotel gym and pool and t...

Today we are once again braving the sub zero temparatures and have a whole day of outdoor sightseeing at the Birds Nest Olympic Stadium. Now ordinarily it is probably very easy to see this stadium from the tube station. Today however it is snowing again and there is a heavy fog over the city. We therefore wander off in the wrong direction initially but eventually stumble across the stadium when we are about 50 metres away. Had a wander round and then spent about ...

Today we have been told by one of the other guests in the hostel that Top Gear are filming in Beijing at the Art Sector so off Nick and I went. After 3 hours of being lost we finally found where they were supposed to be but there was no sign of them so they were either never there or had already wrapped up for the day (I'm sure a 6 ½ foot white guy would have been very conspicuous if he was there!!) We then spent another 2 hours wandering aimlessly before head...

Today we set off early to visit the Great Wall of China, Nick had done some research and found we could get there by metro and then bus for a fraction of the cost of the organized tours. Managed the metro bit ok but then when we tried to get on the bus they didn't want us too and kept on pointing us to a different bus which had a different number. In the end we gave up and got on the bus which was very full so we figured wherever it was going was going to be po...

Well the heat in our cabin last night meant little sleep was managed by either of us. We arrived in Beijing early morning in a snow storm so we went from 30°C to 0°C in 1 second. Checked into our hostel and then set off to try and sort out some visas for Russia. Decided we would go and book everything through a travel agent as we expect the Russian Embassy will either have staff who speak Chinese or Russian so we may struggle a bit (although Nick thinks he le...