Monday 22 October – Today we hired three Mobikes and with our tour guide Ryan went off on a tour of the centre of the city using the back streets and the narrow alleys of the Hutongs and cycle lanes.

However every so often we had to cross large roads and that is where you take your life into your hands.  With traffic coming from all directions, plus buses, scooters and cyclists all going at the same time.  Its totally chaotic and a little heart stopping but we survived.

Surprisingly you you don’t see a lot of Police in Beijing.  But when we arrived at Tienanmen Square there were lots of them everywhere.  You can’t stop to take pictures as you go past the square, if you do you are immediately approached by a security guard and told to move on.

To get onto the square you have to go through a security gate, show your passport or for Chinese their identity card and put any luggage or rucksacks through an x ray machine. You are not allowed to take bikes onto the Square so we had to leave these a few streets away.

The square itself is rather unremarkable, no benches, just a very large square, with the Tienanmen Gate (the building they always show on news reports on the front of which is the big picture of Mao) at one end and Chairman Mao Mausoleum at the other.

We leave Beijing tomorrow on the Bullet Train to Shanghai.

Things I will take away from my trip to Beijing: how clean it is, tonight around 9.30pm when we arrived back at the house we are staying at there were still people out sweeping the street and narrow alleys around the Hutong keeping them free from litter and leaves.

The lack of taxis for such a big city.  Taxis are very cheap but they are very hard to find and you are lucky to get one.  Didi (the Chinese version of Uber) are no better.  So we finished up taking buses and travelling on the metro for the most part.

The smog that covers the city day in day out and stops you from seeing anything in the distance.

The two highlights from our time in Beijing, the Great Wall and cycling in Beijing.

Sunday 21 October – Today we travelled out for a meal with Ryan our tour guide and his girlfriend at their apartment situated 30 miles out of Beijing. Ryan lives with his parents but they were away on holiday.

We had a lovely simple meal, it was the best food and the most enjoyable meal so far. It was also great to see how every day Beijingers live, where they live and the sort of food they eat.

The one downside was the traffic in Beijing, it took us one and half hours to get out there and two hours to get back.

We have been very lucky with the weather so far, its been sunny every day.  Its chilly in a morning and in the evening but the weather during the day has been warm and very pleasant.

Saturday 20 October – Today we went to the the Great Wall at Simatai, a two hour drive from Beijing.

Traffic in Beijing is horrendous so it was very difficult to get out of the city, lots of traffic jams and hold ups.  This despite the fact that they have five ring roads circling the city.  (Interesting Fact: London has just over 8 million people, Beijing has just over 21 million people).

Chinese drivers are totally crazy, they don’t follow any rules of the road, its just everyone for themselves, with people changing lanes constantly, pushing in any chance they get and horns sounding constantly.  So it was an interesting drive.

On arrival at Simatai we paid our entry fee, yes you have to pay to go on the wall.  We had a 45 minute walk up a steep path to reach the wall itself and then walked from watch tower two to watchtower 6. We then took the easy way back down on the cable car, which was a lot easier.

The wall is amazing you are in total awe at how they managed to build such a structure following the crest of one steep sided hill after another.

The views are amazing but the down side is because the wall follows the crest of the hill as it goes up and down, the wall itself is very steep sided.  We chose to walk up hill which might appear to be silly but walking down felt even more dangerous as there are lots of uneven steps, some shallow some very deep in depth, so there is less chance of falling going up hill. But it was exhausting work, so you had to have lots of stops to get your breadth back.

While on the section we walked the wall was nice and wide, there are for the most part no side walls to stop you falling off, if you are daft enough to get too near to the edge. So it was not a walk for the fainthearted.

Our Scott flew his drone, but before he could get any good video of the wall snaking its way across the hills an official told him to stop and delete the footage taken!!

One thing about China is how clean it is, you hardly ever see any litter and no graffiti.  There are people sweeping up day and night with their twig brushes everywhere you go, including amazingly one worker we saw on the wall.

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.

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.

Sue & I are too old to be flying long haul in economy so we treat ourselves and fly business class.  However on this trip Scott had lots of BA Air Miles so we were able to upgrade to first class.  One of the benefits of flying first class with BA from Terminal 5 at Heathrow is that you have your own check in and security check area.  So it only took five minutes to get through both and into the Concorde Lounge, which certainly beats our experience on our normal holidays to Spain.  All the food and drink is free in the Concorde Lounge: in reality customers have paid for it many times over but it feels like its for free. So we sat down for a nice three course A La Carte lunch during which Scott had four glasses of expensive champagne and Sue two glasses.  I stuck to one glass of orange. Our flight leaves at 4.30pm when no doubt we will be served another meal. I can see why so many business people are overweight. Good job we have lay flat seats so we can go to sleep. We are due to arrive in Beijing at 2.30am UK time, 9.30am Beijing time.

Travelled down to London yesterday and stopped overnight in a Travel Lodge.  Given how Brexit is dominating the news it was interesting to note that not one of the staff we met appeared to be British. Who is going to fill all the jobs in the hospitality industry, National Health, care industry, if we reduce immigration like the Brexiteers want to do?

Customer service award for the day goes to the young lady on the hotel Reception who when I asked where the nearest shop was located so I could go and get some milk, said I can give you some.  She then proceeded to ask if I wanted a cup full or a full bottle and if I would prefer skimmed milk or Soya milk.  As Andy Hanselman would say its all about empowering your staff to act and teaching them how to delight your customers.

The Coleman family, Susie, Scott and Jim, are off on our travels again in October this time venturing to China for three weeks.