Today is our last day in Beijing, what a fantastic city!! We've both thoroughly enjoyed our time here...

Before heading off we decided to head up to the Olympic Village again, this time for a swim in the water cube in order to get away from the 40c heat and the ridiculous humidity!!

On our way to the Olympic Village we stumbled upon a strange little side street right in the heart of Beijing. The street was littered with stalls selling everying to live scorpions on sticks to deep fried tarantulas and lacoste (crocodile)!!

When we arrived at the Village we took a stroll past the Birds Nest stadium and quickly found the ticket office, we guessed at which ticket we need for a swim and made our way in to the cube. Once inside we were told we had to purchase "head condoms" or swimming caps if we wanted to swim..

On our way to the changing rooms we were confronted by a rather sinister looking China doctor with a stephoscope. Apparently, our hearts had to be checked before we were allowed in the pool and we had to do a 25m test if we wanted to use the deep end!

We decided not to bother with this and made our way to the shallow end, after cooling off and doing a few laps we noticed that the lifeguards were very whistle happy.
For some reason we set about trying to get whistled at, but despite trying as hard as we could the guard just seemed fascinated by the crazy western people in his pool!

Sandy managed to get a few pictures of us taken by an american lady who stood two yards away from the lifeguards chair which had a big sign with NO PHOTOS attached to it, and still no whistle...

After our swim we had a traditional Peking Duck dinner and headed off to the Train Station to catch our overnight train to Shanghai...