Silk Road Day 4: Beijing

Today we saw the big three: the Great Wall, Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. All were amazing. Wish I could say the same about the weather. It was foggy and raining all day. This did not seem to deter approximately 200 million Chinese people, all of whom seemed to be in the places we went today.

Standing in Tiananmen Square, you could picture the tanks rolling in to stop the student demonstration in 1989. And that huge queue of people? Those are all people waiting to go into Chairman Mao's mausoleum and pay their respects.

The Square is huge, much bigger than you expect. It is bordered by Mao's mausoleum, the Houses of Parliament, and the Forbidden City. You could probably fit a million people in it, it's so big.

The Forbidden City was ridiculously enormous; it must have been so intimidating for foreign dignitaries to visit.

I couldn't get over how steep the Wall was, and although I had a migraine today I still managed to climb part of it so I was pretty proud of myself.

Quiet night tonight as we have an early start to our train journey tomorrow!