Jianguo Hotel Zunhua

... of movies during our flight. My first impression of Beijing... it's really a big City and freezing! TOday we went to the Tiananmen Square but unfortunately the forbidden city was close. Tomorrow we will give it another try!

... and there's so much to see - but as it's an easy city to navigate (great metro system!) we saw most of what we wanted to see very easily.

Above all it was really brilliant to be able to stay at Natasha and Morag's lovely comfy place and have the great advantage of theirs and Dan's invaluable advice on what to do, where to go, how to get there etc - thank you sooo much guys, we're extremely grateful, you've been ace!

5.45am start as we needed to be at the Leo Hostel in Quianmen at 7.30 to join the tour to the 'secret wall'.

A secret wall tour means that rather than going to one of the four main tourist sites outside Beijing, some hostels organise for small groups to 'undiscovered' and much lesser known parts of the wall - much harder to get to as you have to travel out of the city for 3 hours then hike up to the wall for a few hours and back ...

... at the various accessible points within a day-trip distance of Beijing. The closest of these are known to be over-run with tours and hawkers, which I was desperate to avoid, so I found myself on a minbus at 7a.m., for the three-hour drive to Jinshanling, which is supposed to be much less developed. It was a good choice, with only a handful of other visitors along the ancient trail - even the hawkers weren't too pushy ...

... of Jixian, we stopped to have a big Chinese lunch with family of our driver. As usual, the topic usually revolved around me and my few bits of Hanyu I can actually manage to say. It's often a curse to be the center of attention, and as much as I enjoy being in an exotic foreign location, I really don't enjoy being an exotic foreign thing to everyone I meet. Regardless, the lunch was delicious (big pot in the middle of the concave table with boiling fish ...

... get a printout of the hotel address in English and Chinese which you can show to the taxi drivers.

5. You do NOT have to pay any deposit or booking fee even if you book months in advance. They will hold your booking until 6 p.m. on the day you are supposed to arrive.

6. I have used this website more than 10 times to book hotels in China and never once have the hotel ...

... a couper le souffle, des marches et des marches et des marches.... C'etait, au bas mot, genial !!! La muraille est bien conservee mais ne semble pas (comme dans d'autres sites) tout droit sortie d'une production d'EuroDisney.. Bon enfin, regardez les photos et vous jugerez par vous meme. Bon ceci dit entre la journee d'hier ou on a sillone tout Beijing a pied et la randonnee d'aujourd'hui, nous on est creve !!

... a couple of exotic birds and a chipmunk. He decided to follow us and copy what we was saying as we were riding along h was shouting 'Michael' 'Michael'. We decided to have more fun by shouting "I'm a tiger, I'm a tiger'. Sure enough the weird taxidermist on a bike with his animals shouting 'I'm a tiger' made a few more people stare. Next stop, Chengde - a summer retreat for royalty so hopefully it will be good enough for us. Hope you're all well. Katie and Mikey. xx

... months before departure). However, to my surprise very few of us spoke any Mandarin. There were maybe ten people who could speak as much or more than I. Whether or not this is a good thing is ambiguous. It meant I wouldn't be the worst off, but also we'd be having a more difficult time navigating a city that spoke very little English. I shared a meal with four other volunteers while waiting for our plane to board. We indulged ourselves ...

... behind. But let's start with the driving. Upon arriving at the airport, the group of us (there were 22 of us...so many people for such a small trip...but it was nice in the end) had the lovely opportunity to experience the never-ending line of hawkers and people that are simply there to rip you off. Luckily, none of us did, I think, but in China, you never really know. So, once in the taxi, we realize that *finally* we were all back to normal (except for the Brits) and ...