The following day we went to a god awful place called The Silk Markets. Everythings fake but it cheap, so we brought a few jumpers and scarfs etc for the cold weather we were now faced with in Beijing. We spent nearly the whole day in there haggling and arguing the rediculous prices in which we were givin in the first instance.

After a long hard days work shopping we got a taxi back to our hostel and chilled out for the evening.

The following was our day to conquer the Great Wall of China, We had signed ourselves up to do a 10km hike from Jingshanling to Simitai. We got the bus from our hotel and travelled 3 1/2 hrs outside Beijing to Jingshanling where we would start our hike. After being briefed on the route in which we needed to take we set off on our hike, We trudged up many steps to get to the Great Wall itself, by which point I was already huffing and puffing. We set foot on the wall and looked over the edge to see mountains and hillsides forever more with The great wall of China stretching for as far as the eye can see. After 3 1/2 hours we came to the end. at the end of the hike to get to a suspended bridge to cross to the other side. Once on the other side you have to take another 250 steps to reach the zip wire. Once at the zip wire you get strapped in and cross a river where then you take a boat back to the bus. Thankfully on arrival back to bus we were not the last ones like originally suspected. There were another 12 people behind (whihc is always nice to know) we sat down and had some dinner whilst we waited for the others to arrive back and then make the 3 hour journey back to Beijing.

The next day went to The Olympic stadium to see the Birds next, we thought we would brave public transport, the underground was easy and straight forward but the buses are not so, considering they are all in Chinese, luckily on out train there was a uni student from America who was heading to the Olypmic stadium himself so we tagged along with him to get there. The stadium and the Ice Cube are very impressive. We went into the Staduim for a look around but unfortunatly were not alound to have our picture taken on the running track. Having has a few pictures taken with locals (at their request) and almost being conned on the way in by a man trying to sell us tickets into the stadium on the pretence that all tickets were sold out (this we did not fall for!) we made our way back to the bus stop to try and get back to the hotel. We got off on totally the wrong stop and ended up having to get a taxi back, abit pricey but saved us wandering around Beijing at night with no idea of where we were!

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