We decided that we would have a lie in and catch up on sleep ahead of our overnight hard train seat to Beijing tonight that neither if us were looking forward to!

I ended up getting up at 9 anyway as I couldn't sleep and wet down to eat breakfast, joined by Jenny about 90 minutes later.

After she had eaten, we put our bags in storage and headed out for our last day in Beijing. On the menu today, the forbidden city and tiannamen square.

First we did the city as we couldn't find a crossing to get across and do the square!! We walked through the initial grand gates into the vast complex and paid our ¥40 entrance fee.

Now what happens here is you walk through and past series after series of gates, halls, palaces and gardens, there's literally loads of them.

It was pleasant because it was such a nice day, but what strikes you after the first half dozen is how samey everything is. All of them were built in the 1200's by the Ming dynasty and most were rebuilt after fire, or just because they wanted to by the Qing dynasty in the 1700's. Most halls or palaces seemed to have a throne in them, lions with dragons on their backs in carving or sculpture form, and ornate urns in front of them. It was becoming a source of humour for me and Jen, predicting often correctly what we were about to see in the next hall! 'I reckon that next one was originally built by Ming, then revuikt by qing after a fire'. Giggles ensued.

It was still pretty amazing though, the actual being there at such an important place in Chinese history not lost entirely on me.

We walked through and came out onto a wide street besieged by touts selling rides in their cyclo taxis or offering tours to the great wall, insisting on you taking their business card even though you said you'd already been.

There were beggars galore here, those who points at their children and begged, those with limbs missing, and most troubling, one who had no legs and only one arm who was badly scarred and pretended to sing along to something in his stereo. Jenny gave money to most which I admire in her. Clearly I'm not as compassionate.

We were tired and it was a loooong walk back to the start where the square was, and so when an innocent looking man in a cyclo offered to take us to the square for ¥3, it seemed like a great idea. It was painful, the guy laboured (or pretended to) saying I was too heavy (I've seen women pulling around entire carts of scrap metal, fridges and everythin without complaining) while other cyclo drivers came up and tried to get us to split up.

Eventually Jenny caved in and got into a different cyclo and we were peddled around all manner of back streets and alleyways and had no clue where we were, until eventually we were dropped off (after what felt like being paraded around the locals) and after photos with the drivers they demanded ¥30 each for their troubles. They got ¥5 and we scarpered. No idea where we were, I fortunately had a no wi-fi required gps map of Beijing which got us back to where we wanted to be. Along the way we met a fellow European who was looking for an entrance to the forbidden city which I showed him on his map, and shared stories of being ripped off (he'd been invited for an authentic Chinese cup of tea and they tried to charge him ¥1200 for the priviledge. For one cup of tea!

We found our way through the streets and back to the entrance of the forbidden city, using the subway to get to tiannenmen square.

It's massive, there's no doubt, flanked on both sides by huge Russian esque buildings housing national treasures in the museum and celebrating national pride. In the middle there is the people's monument it think, and further on Mao's mausoleum, an ugly building for an ugly man. It was fairly underwhelming to tell the truth, just a big old space which doesn't really do justice to the blood that has been spilled there over decades from a government who will not let their people get to ahead of themselves.

We walked an hour back to the hostel, shattered again after walking a million miles for food and beers before heading out to get the train.

We left the lovely hostel and got the tube up to Beijing railway which was simple enough and got there in plenty of time to get our train. We clambered through with the rest of them (Chinese people, even on a numbered seated train HAVE to be there first) and got to our seats. Essentially the same as soft sleeper cabins but the top bunks are for luggage and three people have to sit on each of the lower bunks. Fortunately there were only five of us.

The back of our seat was stuck up and very uncomfortable, I did try to raise this with the conductor but they looked at it, made like they would fix it, then never returned. Me and one of the chinese guys fixed it though, simply by taking the nuts and bolts out of it. Screw you Chinese Raikways! I blew up my pillow, put on my eye mask, and hankered down for what was to be, an uncomfortable nights sleep. The guy next to me had the right idea. After shifting some luggage around, he got up on a top bunk, something us Brits would be too polite to do, and settled down on a bunk. Still, at least that gave me a bit more room as I huddled into a fetal position and began my mission to sleep!