The most beautiful sunny day under clear blue skies walking around a city filled with amazing sights and sounds. We started off wondering down what we have named 'Disney street', a series of shops in a theatrical setting; there is even a wooden tram!! The street is laid out with stalls and red lanterns for New Year. The lanterns bob and bounce, dancing in the icy Mongolian wind.

I feel somewhat ashamed to admit that we again succumbed to western breakfast tastes and chose KFC to start the day followed by Starbucks for coffee. Wrapped up in our ski gear, we then walked through the windy, icy streets to the Temple of Heaven, an amazingly ornate blue and turquoise Confucian temple set in a beautiful park. Cue many kodak moments.

We then wandered towards the exit of the park and had a crash course in Chinese leisure interests: we watched old men performing gentle Tai chi moves amongst the trees; in a covered walkway, large-scale games were played, the clicking of mahjong pieces fighting against the noise of a group of men singing old songs in the sun. We sat and listened and swayed to the old tunes. Moving and magical.

Then off to meet Mona (whom Sam met in Thailand) and our Chinese guides for the day, Cun Xie and Jen. There followed an amazing few hours of wandering through the hutongs, the ancient tiny back streets of Beijing, on foot and by rickshaw, a cold but amazing experience. It may however have been more pleasant without the sound of our 'driver' repeatedly loudly sucking phlegm into his mouth and then spitting it forcefully onto the road. We watched locals skating on the frozen lake and were shown round the courtyard and buildings of an inhabited house in one of the hutongs and spent some time conversing with a minah bird who eventually responded 'nihao' to our poor attempts at Chinese, to much hilarity!!

Sam and Cun Xie insisted that we try 'cho tofu' (literally 'smelly tofu'); an acquired taste maybe?! The octopus balls were more my thaing. We then wandered along East Street for some time until our lovely guides confessed that they couldn't find the restaurant where they had been planning to take us... good to know that it's not only visitors who struggle navigationally in this city. By this time it was around -12 and I was starting to think that my legs might snap. We took our life into our own hands by grabbing a taxi to the restaurant. It appears that the wearing of seat belts, the obeying of red traffic lights and the concept of driving on one particular side of the road are rather alien to certain Beijing taxi drivers.

We eventually arrived physically unscathed at a Beijing hot pot restaurant where Cun Xie ordered us an exquisite selection of meats, veg and accompanying sauces to dunk into the steaming hotpot. For which he absolutely refused to let us pay. I felt really overwhelmed by the kindness of this stranger who so wanted to treat us to food to welcome us to his city. Sam felt that it would not be acceptable for us to insist on paying (he would feel that he was 'losing face') so we had to settle for insisting that dinner would be on us the next day.

Back to our hotel for cards, chatting and more beer...