Thursday 18 October – Arrived in Beijing on a nice sunny, warm day, unfortunately the smog meant we could not see the mountains and hills surrounding Beijing.  Met by Ryan our tour Guide who comes from Inner Mongolia but now lives in Beijing.

We arrived at our Airbnb House  situated in an old part of Beijing at lunch time.  The photos on the Airbnb website had made it look like an up market, posh and stylish place situated in an old part of Beijing – a Hutong.  The reality was a little different, so we were a little if not very disappointed. But hey ho we are only her for 5 days, so it will be fine.

We had planned to walk to Tienanmen Square in the afternoon but we were too tired to go out, so had a sleep and then went out to LiQun Roast Duck restaurant in the evening.  This is a famous restaurant situated in the owners house in an old Hutong.

From the outside it looks run down, a bit grubby and seedy but long queues of locals waiting to get in spoke volumes for how highly it is regarded.  Nice food but what made it special was the place itself, little rooms, very crowded, people sat together on communal tables and very noisy.

The traffic in Beijing is mad.  There are no rules of the road and cars go everywhere.  Scooter and cycles are even worse so you have to be constantly looking out for vehicles.  One amazing thing was at least half the scooters and cycles had no lights on, although it was very dark.

Another shock to the system was having to walk through security gates and put bags through an x ray machine to get into the Metro and rail station where we went to pick up some tickets.