From London I flew to Beijing where I stayed with Lucy. She moved to Beijing to learn mandarin and had been living there for about a month before I arrived. This made my life very easy as she could show me around and teach me about how things work in China. Not many people speak English, so it would have been a lot harder to do it on my own!
Lucy and I having my first Chinese dinner in Beijing! Delicious!
The best thing about Beijing was visiting the Great Wall of China. It was amazing being there and i was very lucky with the weather as it was a bit cloudy, best conditions to walk! I went on an organised tour, and decided i wanted to do the long hike which starts in Jinshanling, 3 hours from Beijing. Therefore I had a super early start.... pick up at 6.30am! The hike lasted around 4.5 hours and it finished in Simatai. Though i spent a couple of days afterwards with pains in my legs, it was totally worth it!
Me in the Great Wall... it really makes you feel very little 
My second highlight of Beijing, and a lot of people would probably disagree with me was the Olympic village, i really enjoyed being there...... but then, hey! I'm an Olympic fan! I even managed to go into the Water Cube were all the water competitions took place.
Inside the Water Cube
From Beijing I travelled by train to Xian..... 11 hours in an overnight train that I almost missed. Never underestimate rush hour in Beijing, specially when you need to travel across the whole city. I travelled to Xian in soft sleeper (you would have never guessed it was soft!) and shared the room with 3 chinese men that didn't say a word to me (I wonder why!) nor between them (very strange considering how loud chinese can be).
I spent two days in Xian. Where the first thing I did as soon I arrived was to sign for a tour to see the Army of Terracota Warriors. It was a very rainy day but it didn't spoilt the fan as the warriors are all covered. There are three pits to visit, and they rightly advice you to start with Pit 3, the smallest of all, to finish with Pit 1 which is the very impressive one with lots of warriors. The main challenge was to find the best spot to get good photos and to avoid the masses of tourists all fighting to get their picture taken with the warriors.
Terracota warriors
I stayed one more day in Xian, a much smaller city than Beijing, but still bigger than Madrid! The Muslim Quarters was particularly interesting as I got to see many interesting foods (uncooked and cooked). It was quite an experience to see how people treat food in China! I also managed to get a bus to see the Great Goose Pagoda, the biggest pagoda in China. It was probably very funny to see me talking to the driver and explaining to him where i was going and to let me know where i needed to get off..... It worked! and I'm glad I went to see it as I got a great view of Xian from the top.
Next move was Shanghai.... my initial plan was to go by train, but I had already tried the chinese trains and time was more important. In Shanghai I stayed with Ole (my norwegian friend), who happened to be there for a training course with his company. He was staying in a lovely apartment on the west side of town. The culinary adventure started here! First night we ventured ourselves to a restaurant that didn't have a menu in english, thank you to those menus with lots of pictures we managed to have a nice meal.
Shanghai is an impressive city and has a very different pace and feel to Beijing. In Shanghai everything is fast and modern... there are only a few old building left gathered around the Bund and the old town. My highlight of Shanghai was the old town, though not necessarily the commercial part, but the hutong style one where you see how people really used to live. They have very knitted communities and spend a lot of their lives at their door step, either selling food, washing clothes or just sitting and watching the world pass by.
The other highlight is the Yuyuan gardens, such a gem in the middle of such modern city. It's simply beautiful and I was lucky when i went as there weren't too many people.
I will tell you more about China in next entries, and will send more photos too! Let me know if there is anything in particular you would like to know...... there is so much to say about China.
From Hong Kong (last day) until next time!
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