Its around a week since I touched down in Beijing, and I've certainly not been wanting for things to do. Here are the highlights of Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

On Tuesday I decided to go to the summer palace YiHeYuan, which used to be a retreat for the later (Qing dynasty) emperors. The palace is about 30 km outside the centre of Beijing, and a pain to get to. I walked half an hour to a bus stop (though only had to wait for 5 minutes), before a fairly tortuous hour and a half journey to the palace. The bus was packed full of people, and I got a fair few funny looks (I guess Westerners don't use the buses very often). The palace was very cool, although I couldn't see much due to the acidy drizzle that didn't let up all day. Lots of impressive old buildings and courtyards, with strategically placed rocks and plants. The two hour journey back to the bus stop was a pain, but overall the trip was worth it (despite spending longer on the bus than at the palace). I had a quiet drink in the evening, decided that Shanghai would be the next destination, and had a fairly early night, in preparation for...

...the trip to the train station on Wednesday morning. Long, painful confusing... and all I was doing was buying the ticket! I'm exagerating a bit. It was a long hot walk, and although I got some help from the ticket office, I had to queue for half an hour at a specific point with hundreds of people milling about and shouting. I got the ticket, and didn't do much for the rest of the day. Went out for some noodles with an English guy called Liam, and then had a couple of drinks with him and two Scottish guys. They were both Physics students but one looked familiar... and after a bit of chat I found out that he'd been the guitarist for Dogs Die In Hot Cars! How crazy is that? They weren't a huge band, but I was still pretty amazed - I'm a big fan, so it was a little bizarre! I had another reasonably early night to make the most of thursday (the train was at 8:20 on thursday evening).

So Thursday was just spent wondering round some more. In the album associated with this entry there's some of pictures of the Lamaist (Tibetan) temple, YongHe, views from the streets, and Beihai park; I went there with a couple of american guys from the hostel. Grabbed some noodles for dinner (noticing a pattern?) and shot off to the train station, in order to catch my overnight train to Shanghai... where I find myself now. No plans really, other than to see the Bund and Putong (all the new skyscrapers). I'll post a Shanghai entry in a couple of days!