I've been considerably resentful of myself for the format in which i start off this day by day blow of what I'm at. I had some faint hope that it would be somesort of personal diary for myself along the way that i would maintain it with consistent fervour......But let's face it, exciting stuff doesnt happen everyday and if I'm bored to my teeth after two weeks of writing it, i can't imagine how boring it is to read.Owing to that fact, i've decided to approach this in a much looser format, one which fits within the constraints of my will power...which many of you can vouch, is very little indeed. Let's continue.......

I have to say in hindsight, that Beijing is an exceptionally charming place...In most parts. Our hotel was in the Hutongs, which are the old alley ways that surround the Forbidden City, the epicentre of Beijing, China, The World, The Universe, Amen.The hutong dwellings appear unreasonably small but we figured they don't have any toilets as there are public toilets at the end of each block. These are kept meticulously clean but i can imagine making your morningly deposit and having a chat with your neighbour at the same time? But toilet issues don"t seem to be too much of a private matter here. Just to note, our hotel DOES have a toilet, with a door and walls even, thank you very much.We spend the first day between the Forbidden City and Tiananmen square. It's a sunday, scorching hot and packed. It looks exactly like you'd imagine from the movies and we're excited as hell at the prospect of walking around, getting lost and checking out all the werid and wonderful nooks and crannies it supposedly has. Unfortunately for us and our ill-timed visit to Beijing, all the palaces and buildings of any particular interest are closed for refurbishments in prepartion for the Olympics. Bummer. Still, it's a pretty amazing place, it would be best to see it early in the morning when its quiet and peaceful like i'd imagine it was before it was in time of yore!'Tiananmen Square is big and exceptionally ugly. Those Commie architects made a right ol hash of the place.The most interesting thing about the place is the Chairman Mao memorial Hall in which he's perfectly preserved body is lying in state. It's too late to go visit him today so we decide to come back another day for a very respecful gawk. The funniest thing about this place however is the amount of Chinese coming up and asking to get their picture taken with us,it was pretty weird to start with but when a queue started forming at one point, we started backing away at high speeds. They took a particular fanscination to our Lisa, probably as she is so beautiful :)

This was followed by five days of lots of pointing and giggling. We asked one guy with very good English what was the fascination and he very diplomatically said it was our height (giant) and our facial features (round eye). I think if you're Chinese and you come to Tiananmen Square, it's custumary to get your photo taken with a foreigner, sort of like coming to Dublin and doing a big cheesy thumbs-up with the Molly Malone.We did come back another morning to visit Chairman Mao. The story goes that when he died, he wanted to be cremated, but as a big giant screw you Mao, his successor had him perserved and puts him on show for the world to see in a very plain glass box, surrounded by full height, bullet proof glass walls. Ok, i don't know if the walls are bullet proof or not but what of some minor embelishment?! He is kept in a freezer and is brought up and down twice daily for the public to file past and pay their respects. Seemingly his left ear fell off once so they superglued it back on.....I can sincerely say i tried to approach this with an open mind.We have to check in our cameras before we enter through security and are whisked past him in two lines and immediately find ourselves right into the official Mao Souvenir shop. All i can say is that it was the bizarest sight, he had this bright orange light illuminating his face, he looked like a glow worm.I'm assuming the reason you don't get to dawdle is so too close an inspection isn't possible.....And do i think he's real? The three of us agree we've seen more realistic Jackie Chans in Hong Kong.

We spend the next few days in Beijing checking out the beautiful summer palace and hanging out in this deadly tiny roof top bar in the Hutongs close to our hotel. We watch a series of awful B-rate movies, shown nightly in the bar in our hotel, chilling out and having a laugh.Oh and we went to a Beijing Opera, which was spectacular if possibly a bit short. Possibly my favorite persuit yet came when we hiked the Great Wall. This is the section we walked

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jinshanling

Jinshanling is roughly about 3 hours from Beijing so we set of early with a tour from another hostel. We all had this vague assumption that we were taking a 3 hour stroll along the wall and would get the bus back later that day.....WRONG! This section of the wall has some of the steepest climbs and the first hour is sheer agony as it's mid day and the sun is beaming down. We slog on and hit some sections that are really perilous and dangerous. Our 'guide' has fecked off and leaves us to our own devices, which is alot of sweating and ass-crunching climbs. When we finally reach the rope bridge that signalled the end of our hike, we're pleased as punch with oursleves for having completed what we had. The scenery was amazing and i had to keep on pinching myself to remind myself that i was really on the Great Wall of China. Despite the heat I enjoyed everysecond of it. My Nike Air Force Ones, gifted to me by the lovely Lauren Kavo, stood up to the test and made mince meat of that wall! Yay!

As we're getting the overnight train to Shanghai, we decided to rent bikes on our last day and go check out the lakes near the hutongs.Nice and relaxing. At about five o clock we stop and get a coffee and the sky suddenly starts to darken. We decided to wait and hope the rain will pass in a few minutes. We wait and wait and bit by bit the tunder and lighting would become more frequent. Eventually when it does start raining it buckets down for nearly 40 minutes more with no sign of stopping. We realise we're going to miss our train to Shanghai if we don't go soon and set off cycling in rush hour traffic back to our hostel. We can't see a thing in front of us and the lighting is coming down around us. Aoife assured me the rubber on the wheels of my bike would prevent me from getting hit by lightening, a personal fear embedded in me my overzealous worrywart mother....I don't know how true that is but it was enough for me anyway. It was the craziest, scariest feeling ever but bleedin DEADLY! Thankfully we didn't have to go too far and were completely soaked to the bone. We made to wade our way through rivers of yucky brown hutong juice...yuck yuck yuck. The lovely people in our hostel gave us towels and dropped us to the train station (for a charge!) just in the nick of time.we get on our train and set off on our merry way to Shanghai! Yay!