Early start – the train arrived in Beijing West station at 7.10 am and we were met by our local guide, Chen Chong (Mary). She and our driver took us to the hotel where we enjoyed a huge breakfast before setting off for Tienanmen Square.

Paul and I have been fortunate to be coming to China for 5 years now, and today is probably the clearest we have ever seen it – an absolutely spectacular day!

The Square is as vast as you imagine, and then some. We stood outside Chairman Mao’s mausoleum and talked about the People’s Revolution, marveled at the size of the People’s Hall (which took only 10 months to build!), were photographed by nearly every Chinese person walking past and tried to stay warm.

One of the streets running alongside the Square is 50 kilometres long – yes, kilometres!

We then walked across the road (actually, under it) to the Forbidden City. Opened to the public in 1911, it housed 16 different emperors and is ridiculously huge. We walked from one side to the other, visiting pavilion after pavilion, and it took over 2 hours. The architecture is amazing and you can see why it took 14 years to build.

We again had our photo taken innumerable times, and we decided to get in on the act and crash a few other groups’ photos.

When we got back to our hotel, a few of us went to Silk Street Markets. After taking a couple of wrong turns thanks to our intrepid guide (yours truly) and then getting a real guide to assist (Paul), we made it. Everyone began putting their freshly-honed skills in bargaining to the test against real experts – the Silk Street stall holders, with mixed success. But everyone had fun regaling others with their stories.

Dinner was traditional Beijing-style and then we were off to the Kung Fu Show. It was spectacular and well worth it.

Back to the hotel and ready for bucket-list item number two tomorrow – the Great Wall!