Friday 19 October – Our first full day out in Beijing.  Lovely sunny day that got hotter as the day went on. Almost sun cream weather.

We went out for a Beijing breakfast. Had a Jianbin which is a thin egg crepe filled with ciantro, green onions and pickled mustard tubers and a number of Baozis which are steamed dumpling buns filled with pork.

In the morning we visited Beihai Park the highlight of which was the gardens and the groups of young school children all in their matching tracksuits who as they walked past all waved and shouted out in excited voices hello hello, hello to us.

We then went to see the Forbidden City which is huge and magnificent, on a scale that it is hard to understand. We spent three hours walking round and only saw a fraction of what there is to see.

This evening we have been on a Food and Drink Tour vising 5 restaurants to taste different Beijing foods and went into one bar to taste different types of rice wine – as I an teetotal the guide bought me a range of Chinese soft drinks!!

Its only the end of day one and we are all very tired, lots and lots of walking today so we may have to build more rest time into our programme or we won’t last out the three weeks.

The really surprising fact today is how difficult it is to get a taxi in Beijing or Didi Cab their version of Uber.  They are in very short supply and twice today we finished up catching a bus because we could not get a taxi.  Which  is good in the sense we are experiencing how Beijingers get round the city, but when you are tired you and you just want to get home you do not want to wait 10 minutes for a very crowded and hot bus.