Our first full day in Beijing started with a 5.30am alarm for me! Just what I needed after a lack of sleep from the previous day! But it was all for good reason of course.

At 7am we were picked up by our tour guide (Lily) in the hotel reception and we picked our seats on the mini bus. Before we arrived in China we pre-booked tours for everyday in Beijing to make sure we could see as much as possible in the short time we are here! We then proceeded to pick up a couple from Hong Kong at another hotel, and a girl traveling by herself from another.

We caught a glimpse of the Olympic Stadium, the 'Birds nest' - which looked huge - on the way to our first destination, The Ming Tombs. Again though with today being a particularly smoggy day there was a great haze around and can almost make things look quite blurry, the sun particularly.

We only spent about 60 minutes at the Tombs - our guide seemed to fly us through(!) - but it was long enough to see the Underground Palace, also called Dingling, one of the 13 Ming Dynasty Imperial Tombs. From the Yongle Emperor onwards, 13 Ming Dynasty Emperors were buried in the surrounding area. We visited Dingling, the tomb of the Wanli Emperor, which is the only one of the 13 Ming Tombs to have been excavated.

From here we moved on to a Jade carving factory - one the of 'shopping stops' of the tour - where we guided by a very fast English speaking Chinese man who none of us could fully understand! He talked so fast and we were sure at some points he was slipping back into Chinese!! As we looked around the shop he continued to follow us in the hope that we would make a purchase - but with some items reaching to the tens of thousands, we decided not to let go of the little money we had with us!! It was at this jade factory that we also had lunch, a big selection of mainly chicken dishes, another massive bowl of what tasted like tomato soup and some donut type things with an icing type dip! It was all very nice but again far too much food on the table and too early too eat at only 11am!!

It was now that we were off though to the Great Wall of China!!! It was another 1hrs drive from here to the Mutianyu section of the wall (less crowded), going further out into the countryside and then up a very windy mountain road! But it was at this point through the bendy roads we spotted it and we were all excited to go and walk on it!

We chose the cable car option to reach tower 14 - which was a great choice as we had a fab view on the way up and down even though it was extremely steep!!! Walking the Great Wall was fantastic, we took lots of photos and took an hour and a half walking up and down it and soaking it all up. Of course we only got to see a very small section of the wall, but nonetheless, it was a great experience and something I never thought I would do.

We took the cable car back down again, weaved in and out of the market sellers, (bought a couple of Great Wall of China magnets of course) and made our way back to the minibus.

It was the another 1hrs drive back to the city where before being dropped back at our hotels, we had another shopping stop at a Chinese Tea Market. We all tried about 6 different flavoured teas (Alex had to keep finishing mine off!) and then the girl who was demonstrating started her selling pitch... To be fair I did actually like the fruit tea, but I didn't want to buy any and neither did Alex!!

After our escape from the Chinese Tea Market we were dropped back at our hotel. We had a quick doze and then went back out to the night markets where many foody delights were on offer to be had from starfish to scorpions to deep fried banana! We opted a restaurant for our tea tonight though - noodles with egg and tomato, noodles with soy sauce, green beans with minced pork and pork and tofu in another soy type sauce. Very very nice and we almost finished the lot!

A long tiring day but had a great first full day exploring. Tomorrow we have a city tour booked, we don't get picked up till 7.40am though so a bit of a lie in this time!!

Xxxx