Days in Beijing

After a local breakfast of bao, seaweed and tea egg all for 11yuan on Sat, we set off towards the Summer Palace. Crawling along in Beijing's lengthy traffic we passed a whole street of music stores which we later came back to for a guitar... But first stop was the Summer Palace - the palace utself was closed but we enjoyed a great stroll along the lake amongst the swarms of people.

That night we met up wuth Caroline, a friend working in Beijing, who took us down some small Beijing lanes to pizza at a tibetan-owned cafe.

Sunday involved a lengthy adventure to the wall. We finally made it to Simatai Great Wall after negotiating public buses and prices with private drivers... This section of the wall is on the border of Hubei province and was still quite entact. Beating the weather but not the traffic back into Beijing, we treated ourselves to Beijing Duck in the capital.

More traditional breakkie on Monday that Kath didn't agree with. This time tofu and bean soupy things for 2yuan. Then the Temple of Heaven where locals do Tai Chi, play all sorts of sports and games and sing...

Beijing is huge and our legs started to feel that after a visit to the Forbidden Palace and walking around town to find Wall Street Beijing!

Then is was shopping, packing and then bed ready for our early morning trans-mongolian. Kath chucked a strop, I bought cheap Muslim food and we ended up watching HBO.