Never knowingly taking the shorter route

So spent a day in Beijing being touristy, which is, I figure appropriate. Obviously we were a bit stiff from the wall, but we coped.

We started the day early at a park just north of the forbidden city. This was a good move as the park was absolutly full of locals using it in a variety of ways - the other tourists were still in bed. We saw water caligraphy, a variety of dancing, including ballroom and modern macerana style stuff, people doing all mannor of physical jerks and people climbing the hill (which gave a fantastic view ofer the forbidden city), in a way that made it obvious that they’d done this every day for the lat 50 years. It was really good seeing people actually use a common space. All parks get used for in England seems to be to wal dogs and the occasional game of football.

So next we legged it into the north gate of the forbidden city. This is the gate less used, so for the first half an hour or so we were pretty much alone in the part we were in, which was the ceramonial gardens and were brilliant. Then we went into the buildings part of it and it started filling up so we didn’t linger too long - I’d been there before and there was a lot of building going on. In fact there’s a lo of building and restoring going on all over the place. I wonder why that might be (hmm, Olympics…).

So we wandered through Tianman square (more building work) and wandered down to the Temple of Heaven park where we spent a few hours slowly seeing the bits and doing lots of sitting on benches. It was a nice and relaxing, which i what we needed.

After this we went for Peking duck, which was great, then back to the hostel for a beer before getting the 9:35 train to Xi’an - 12 hours on a seat - nightmare!

Actually, though it had been looming over us fo a while, it wasn’t as bad as we feared. We got no where near as much sleep as if we’d managed to get a cabin, but we weren’t too badly off, at least it was pretty new carriage.

Got into Xi’an this morning - a more caotic station I’ve never seen. Fought our way to the hostel and then set about finding our way to the terracotta warriors.

So what were they like (other than warriors made of clay), tune in next time to find out more. Du du duuuur!

Walked the wall today. I guess I’ll let them off calling it great. We walked about 10km along it. At times it was pretty steep, but we persevered and had a good time. Loads of amazing views - I’ll upload photos when I get a faster net connection - and generally nice to be on my feet rather than on my bum on a train.

I did a similar walk last time I was in China (2002, I think), but it was the day of a massive dust storm and it was impossible to see the views, it was like everything was shouded in this magical red cloud, so going again today was brilliant as I could see what I’d missed out on last time. Also, the zip-wire off it at the end was open so I could go down that too, which was fun.

Ok, tomorrow I’m off to the forbidden city and probably a few other thigns, then I’m off to Xi’an on the train to see the terracotta warriers, so probably next updat in a couple of days.

Phew, talk about wistle-stop!

So, six days on a train. What can I say? I learned that no-one was particularly upset to be leaving Russia, that Siberia is empty, but hot in the summer, that Mongolia is just a desert, that China has amazing hills.

No, me and Emily managed to avoid arguing, so anyone who had bet money on that is pretty much wrong.

Got to Beijing and got sorted in a hostel. As Emily is on a tight schedule we only have two full days in Beijing, but because the trains aren’t doing what we expect we’re going to get the train to Xian to see the terracotta warriors, but then have to get a plane to Hong Kong, which is a shame as I wanted to do it all by land, but the trains just haven’t done what we were led to expect. Oh well, I’ll cope.

Anyway, got to go I need an early night as I’m walking the wall tomorrow.