Met most of the group at 8am and caught a local bus to the gardens surrounding the Temple of Heaven to watch the Chinese doing their morning exercises. One of the strangest but most brilliant things I have ever seen. Every morning (and evening) loads of people flock to the parks to take part in group exercise. This ranges from ballroom dancing to diablo throwing. What we had previously assumed to be children's play areas turned out to be adult outdoor gymnasiums, with full size monkey-bars and balance beams. My favourite group was a a group of around thirty middle-aged women who were practising a dance routine involving maracacas to the music of Mary J Blige. Genius. The UK would be so much better off if we all got up for a bit of a boogie every morning in the park before work.

I left the others to head into the temple (where I went on my first day) and caught the metro along to Tian'anmen square to buy some souvenirs.

After checking out of the hotel, four of us decided to get a metro to the Summer Palace for the afternoon. The palace is built on a rock face, and the various buildings are linked by passageways cut into the rocks. It is set in really lush woodland, with a huge lake, upon which floats a famous marble boat. We wandered around for a few hours. climbing up and down what felt like a thousand steps, taking in the magnificent scenery, made more mystical by the hazy mist all around us.

We left the palace and went to the only nearby restaurant for lunch... McDonalds. Then went back to the hotel, met the rest of the group for dinner and then caught taxis to the station.

The train station was absolutely heaving. As they announced our train everyone rushed forwards. Battling our way past the natives we headed along the platform and found our carriage. In each carriage there are about twelve cabins, each containing six beds (two bunks of three). I grabbed a top bunk, sharing a cabin with Abi, Richard, Lucie and the Estonian couple. We had what is called a 'hard sleeper' carriage, supposedly the worst kind, although I slept really well! At 2am I woke up and braved my first Chinese squat toilet - not as bad as I was expecting, although probably made better by the fact that I was half asleep at the time.