First blog of the trip yeahhh! We're currently sat in a internet cafe in our hostel, the Beijing City Central Youth Hotel. Nothing much to report as yet, though Liam is practically conked out with a mixture of jetlag and tiredness! (And perhaps the addition of a beer or two in the bar). Claire wrote an essay as her first diary entry, and we're both hoping for a fairly early night - though 8pm chinese time is 12pm english time - lunchtime! Our flight in was alright, really long and lethargic, but we were considerably chirpy enroute to our accommodation, even when the taxi driver wasn't quite sure where to take us, and they don't speak english either so he ended up ringing the hostel for us to find out where we were meant to be haha! Liam worked out we've had just 2 1/2 hours sleep over the past 28, but we're hoping to be up and at it in the morning too.

We were quite brave for dinner, going to a restaurant called Yoshinoya, which was basically a look-at-the-photos-and-point job. We THINK we had duck, but to be fair it could have been anything. Was amusing to notice other locals subtly taking photos of us eat, watch tv, generally walk around.... one man called Hans particularly liked Liam's hair, which he could not belive was naturally curly! His shocked expression said it all. Beijing is vast, absolutelty massive. It's not like London where everything is quite close and clustered together - the bulidings are vast, but are surrounded by space, gardens, roads, paths.. And the driving is out of this world, we actually became a part of the pedestrian mass walking INTO oncoming traffic, which would then stop for us, even though we weren't necessarily on a crossing - and it seems beeping here is commonplace. We're lucky that in our hostel some people speak English, as apart from the airport nowhere else is, and interpretting Mandarin pronunciation from a book is a lot harder than it sounds!

We're hoping to go to Summer Palace (google it) and the Olympic Village tomorrow, also to see the CCTV Bulding (google it again). What excited us the most was the prospect of using the entire metro network, all across the city, for a whole day on and off, for just 20p!! So different from our experiences using the tube, and East Midlands Trains!

It's all feeling very surreal that we're finally here, but we want to reassure you that we're fine, we'll try and get a few pics up, and hope to hear from you via message board comments hint hint! We're meeting up with Will on Thursday night, and our trip on Friday - to leave Beijing on Sunday evening, so we're going to make the most of our next few days on our own.

Sweet dreams all. xxxx