From Donna and Clyde: We had another fantastic last day in Beijing with Skye. We started with a tour of the massive Temple of Heaven park complex, watching (mainly retired) locals doing all different styles of dancing and tai chi. Molly and Toby particularly enjoyed the outdoor gym!

We then spent an hour at the Pearl Market bargaining for "genuine imitation" handbags etc. My D&G handbag is well on its way to falling apart already but my $10 gucci watch is going strong. The bargaining was fun but I might have taken it too far when I secured a Paul Frank cover for Toby's ipod for $2 and got told "Lady, you are too tough!"

After lunch we drove over to the Summer Palace where Skye told us all about the "Dragon Lady", Empress Dowager Cixi, who was definitely much tougher than I am!

That evening, Skye had given us written instructions and directions to a restaurant that is popular with the locals so we were going to go on a bit of an adventure to find it, complete with our written chinese questions to ask for directions. However, a downpour put us off the adventure and we decided to stumble across the road instead to avoid getting stuck in the road with no locals around to help with directions. Turns out we ended up in a private dining room of what purported to be the only Michelin 3 star restaurant in Beijing. Not 100% sure whether that was correct (haven't been able to find them on google) but the food and atmosphere were amazing! The main thing that makes me doubt the claim was the price - less than the very average meal we had in our hotel on the first night we arrived!

Wednesday was a very, very long day completely monopolised by travel from Beijing to Rome.

Our first day in Rome has been a lovely sunny spring day. We had tickets booked for the Vatican museums so we set off on foot from our apartment (very close to Vittorio Emmanuel Monument) and smugly walked past the massive queue and straight in thanks to our internet booked tickets. Once we were in, we joined the massive sea of people exploring the museums and eventually heading to the Sistine Chapel. It was something we had wanted to do as we had missed it when we were last in Rome 12 years ago, but Toby was pretty unimpressed!

We then ate lunch in St Peters Square before going through the Basillica.

After a gelato break and trip to the supermarcheto to stock up on some supplies we headed to the Trevi Fountain. I had already been there at 7 am this morning when out for an early morning walk when I only had one other person for company, but it was absolutely packed by mid-afternoon.

Tonight we are just planning to take it easy and catch up on some sleep.

Toby & Molly want to go to the Colosseum tomorrow, so hopefully the weather will co-operate and stay lovely and fine!

From Molly:

We had a really good day in Beijing. We went to the pearl marketwhere I got a fan and a fake prada bag and the we went to the summer palace which was cool. Then we got on the plane and headed to Rome where we went to the Sistine chapel and St Peters Basillica and the Trevi fountain and tomorrow I want to go to the colessuem.

From Toby:

Toby is too busy watching cartoons in Italian to blog tonight.