31 today!! Eek!! A far cry from last years fancy dress vintage themed party with all my best mates at Holyrood!! Still being in Beijing was pretty special and we made the effort to go and see some sights for the day. Dave bought me a lovely notebook from the Frank Gehry exhibition shop, I’m always jotting and sketching down thoughts, plans and ideas so it was very warmly received! A Porridge and banana special for breakfast and we were on our way.

We set out for the Beijing Botanical Gardens, inspired by the success of our bus journey a few days ago we attempted to tube and bus it to the site. The lonely Planet were not entirely accurate in providing information as to which bus to get so we ended up on the wrong path. A quick turn around for a taxi and we arrived at our destination. It isn’t perhaps the best time of year to visit the Botanical Gardens as not much is in flower, but we did find some lovely paths out towards a temple and icey lakes to throw stones on. There was a fair amount of ice on the lake and some gorgeous frosty views. Its well out of the city so you do feel far away from the business of central Beijing.

The tropical greenhouse (much larger than your average garden greenhouse!) was a nice place to get warm and enjoy some cactus growing plants alongside more brides and grooms to be having their pre-wedding photographs taken amongst the orchid garden.

On our way back we stopped off for a quick birthday bite at Japanese fast food chain Yoshinoya. A place that didn’t really entice us whilst we were in Japan but is definitely projected as being a more upmarket food chain over in China, interesting! They even had vegetables on the menu! We went back to the apartment and decided to get ready for our night out.

We had very good intentions of going for a massage at Dragonfly, our favourite and slightly self-indulgent massage parlour in Beijing! What stopped us in our tracks however was an hour delay at Xinjeikou metro station, this was so far our favourite stop as there were never as many people using it and it was well located! So we changed plans and head straight for Gouladjie which was only a few stops away, there was a Malaysian restaurant recommended to us around that way that we wanted to go to. We found Cafe Sambal on the left hand side a couple of streets down from the tube stop set in a Hutong area. It’s a little hidden away behind some wooden doors but inside was a very nicely lit ambient bar and restaurant which was packed to the ceiling with locals and westerners…good so far! At the bar we waited for a table and drank mojitos. We love it that you can buy mojitos over here for around £3, I’m pretty sure we’ve had one for as low as £2! The food was very good, although they could do with upping their portions a little! The room was a little chilly where we sat, but having said that the atmosphere was lovely and as far as birthday settings go this was again pretty frickin’ sweet!

After dinner we went for a walk along the street and came across a very cosy little desert cafe. This was enough to entice us in and we sat with our ginger teas, apple cake and chocolate truffles whilst watching the world go by.

Thank you Dave for a lovely day! I think the 30 year plus grumps came across me when I realised I am now past the tender year of 30, which has been a blooming marvellous year so far!

All my love and thanks for all the birthday messages on Facebook.

Helen x

(Leica M9, Summicron-M 50mm f2.0 & Olympus PEN, 17mm f2.8 & 100mm f2.8, processed in Lightroom 3)

We arranged to meet Jen who we’d met on the hike at the weekend at midday outside the ticket office area of the Aquatics centre in the Olympic park. It was a really foggy/polluted day so we didn’t have great weather for photographing the Birds Nest and the Water cube, but it’s still a worth while thing to do if you have time in the city. The Birds Nest is an amazing structure and certainly draws in the sightseers for a spot of photo time. We spent around half an hour or so walking around the site before making our way to the ticket area for the Water Cube. We had planned to do a swim with Jen in the Olympic pool but when you start enquiring about tickets it goes a little like this: Entrance only: 50 RMB. Swim in training pool: 70 RMB. Water park: 200 RMB.

So if you want to swim it’s for 2.5 hours only, and it’s not the Olympic pool itself it is the warm up pool. The water park is unlimited in one entry so you can spend the whole day there but you can’t use the same ticket if you want to swim. So our dilemma was should we swim…in a cold pool, buy goggles (which takes it up to around 200RMB) and only have two hours or so? Or should we have a really good laugh, go on the slides, wavepool, yes it’s over our budget but we thought we would have loads of fun! So what did we do? Well of course we wanted to have fun, and we managed to persuade Jen to do the same. It’s an interesting experience being in the water park area, it’s not quite warm enough for you to feel fully comfortable in your swim suit and many of the locals don’t really like swimming, so you tend to see people in lifejackets a lot. The slides weren’t being used so we soon started getting ourselves onto the slides and Dave went for the scariest looking one first. A slide that both Helen and Jen thought they wouldn’t end up doing!

It has a vertical drop of around 40 foot, loops around and then splashes you out at the bottom. A capsule at the top of the slide holds you in place and a countdown begins. “3, 2, 1″ and the trap door opens and away you go. Pretty scary stuff but a real thrill. Helen and Jen were unsure and took some gentle persuading but eventually they climbed the stairs and took the plunge. Both loving it, Jen even went twice! Another favourite was The Tornado which places you in a large rubber ring two persons at a time and sends you thundering into a big bowl, lots and lots of screams and laughs by everyone.

After spending a good few hours inside the water park we headed off for some food before our Tai-Chi beginners class. We stopped by at Grandma’s Kitchen and to our dismay we realised that it was Western/American food, ooops, although Jen felt very at home and we enjoyed some American grub. After a meander through the local Hutong we headed to “The Hutong” cultural centre and began our lesson in the art of Tai-Chi. This was with Eric who was very keen to educate us about the history and tradition of Tai-Chi and what benefits it can bring to your life. We only practised for around 30 minutes out of the whole hour dedicated to the class so we left feeling a little disappointed and cold. We did go away with a better understanding of the martial art though and all of us are keen to explore it further.

It was time to say goodbye to Jen but we did have plans to meet again for some bargain shopping the following week. We’d had a really fun day and would like to thank Jen for hanging out with us, I think we all felt a little younger and satisfied with our brave efforts of going down the deadly red slide!

The following day we were leaving on an overnight train to Xian so we had planned to catch up on washing, buying some food for our trip and packing.

(Leica M9, Summicron-M 50mm f2.0 & Olympus PEN, 17mm f2.8 & 100mm f2.8, processed in Lightroom 3)