Huanghe Jingdu Hotel Beijing

... that were super packed, but for the most part it was comfortable. <br><br>Yesterday, (Sunday) Graham and I went to church at an English speaking Catholic service. The church was neat, but kind of different. They had rope lights around Mary's picture at the front of the church and they had big screens up so you could read what they were saying. That is a good thing because I couldn&#8217;t understand the priest&#8217;s ...

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... into it.The birds nest was really cool, we were able to go in and walk around the whole thing. There were lots of chinese schoolkids there on tours and they were all saying 'hello' to us and surprise, surprise wanted to have their picture taken with us. They were all really sweet though so we didn't mind. Went to a Kung Fu show that evening which was a mixture of the martial art itself and the story of how it came about, really good show.

... up and down the rather precarious wall. Some sections had totally collapsed and it was interesting to navigate our way. Although our miniature old Chinese lady guide put us all to shame, she appeared to be doing it in her slippers!! We managed to climb onto the top of one of the watch towers that had not collapsed up a very rickety home-made ladder, the view was amazing. Our little guide through a mixture of chenglish and ...

... with the enormous burning torch in the background. Also, we played Chinese hacky sack between the swimming cube and the national stadium (gymnastics). It was a perfect environment to end our trip. After a very successful hack, we called it quits and headed to the airport. George and I chatted the whole way, catching up and discussing as old friends like to do. I departed on a great note, feeling great about China, the Chinese people (I hope I can see Kevin ...

... size of your appetite. One tip to remember is to lean away from your shoes while eating and bring napkins (this is greasy stuff). Always bargain when paying for kebabs though. Since there are so many vendors selling kebabs, there is a lot of competition. If you can't come to an agreeable price, just move on, the vendor will either give up and give you your price, or you can easily find another vendor who will.

... you see whenever hu jintao is giving a speech. We also spent a while trying to work out where the famous 'protester and tank' photo was taken but to no avail. Obviously we had to avoid saying the 'd' word or the 't' word when in tiananmen square- there are soldiers and police everywhere. As it was beer o clock, we decided to find a beer emporium. One of the most difficult things about urban chinese sightseeing is there simply are ...

... vegetarian food (we later discovered that it was a Muslim restaurant, we should have guessed from the owner's big beard). Everytime I find a good veggie dish, I ask the waitress to write down its name in Chinese characters, so I can ask for it again. Very clever! Eating vegetarian hasn't been a problem so far, I actually had some delicious food and I learned the word for rice (mifan) which is handy. On Monday we started the ...

... to any tourist trap and if they get caught by the police: they received a very high bill... After this first adventure, I've just took the time to get my first taste of Beijing: walking on Tiananmen square and in front of the forbidden city to finish completely dead in my hostel. The first hostel that I found had the particularity to be totally underground: the 4 floors of the hostel were under the surface of the ground and of course no window and very economic.

... views of Beijing. Caught overnight sleeper train to Xi'an (15hrs). The train was busy we had to queue (with our heavy backpacks) for sometime. On the train we got to pratice our Mandarin with the teenagers sharing our sleeping compartment. The motion of the train was comforting but jerky at times (almost like we were coming off the rails). Dinner was instant noodles in a camping cup.