The first day of the tour could potentially be classed as a lie-in now I’ve had time to reflect on it, as we went for breakfast and didn’t have to meet our tour representative in the lobby until 8 am. All the other mornings after this we were out on the road by this time.

At the meeting we were introduced to our representative from the tour company, Alison, who was a young Chinese girl that was full of life and appeared to love her job - the Chinese actually have two names, which I didn’t know before, a Chinese name and an English name. Alison relayed a host of important information to us all, and we joked about the number ‘13’ being an unlucky number so decided to make Alison the 14th member. Our group consisted of two people from New Zealand, Five from Australia, and six from the UK: Clare, Sonya, Dallas, Paige, Belinda, Richard, Ruby, Tim, Debbie, Cheryl, Nic, me and Richard number two.

So, we set off to discover the delights of Beijing. Beijing, the capital of China, is known for its modern architecture and ancient sites. The roads here, as I previously mentioned, are somewhat manic. We were told that it is incredibly hard to get a driving licence here and that it takes several years and, even then, you are only allowed to drive on certain days of the week when they correspond with the numbers on your car number plate. This explains the huge number of mopeds and bicycles that are on the roads. There didn’t appear to be any rules as to where they went and how many lanes of traffic they made; some had helmets on and some didn’t. At night, many had no lights on and one day I sadly witnessed someone be knocked off their moped. I also saw many people driving their cars with one hand whilst holding a mobile phone in the other.

Our first stop was Tiananmen Square, which is the Entrance Gate of the Imperial Palace complex and Imperial City in the centre of Beijing. It was first built in 1420 during the Ming Dynasty, and Tiananmen was the entrance to the emperor’s residence. The square is huge, probably bigger than I had expected. There was a real buzz of excitement around me, as tourists in large numbers kept arriving all the time. Colourful costumes were everywhere, and flags waved madly on sticks to ensure that groups stuck together. The sky was blue, and the heat was already beginning to hot up for the day. Prior to entering the square, which was the case for most of China’s sites, everyone had to go through a security check that included a passport check. Debbie and I had our small insect repellent sprays removed at this point and thrown away, due to the flammable sign, where they joined a box of lighters, small bottles of alcohol and various other flammable liquids that had so far been removed from tourist that day. We had our first group photo taken here which was put in the front of a lovely souvenir book that we could purchase a copy of at the end of the day.

Our next stop was the Forbidden City, also in the centre of Beijing, that was built in the early 15th century as the Palace of the Ming Emperors of China. It has undergone many changes over the years. The architecture here, and in all the places we visited on our trip, was amazing. The Forbidden City also houses the lovely Palace Museum and the gorgeous Imperial Garden with its blossom trees, numerous colourful flowers and bonsai trees. It was all such a lot to take in and so mesmerising.

It was soon time for a well-earned break for lunch before embarking on an afternoon visit to the Temple of Heaven to complete our tour of Beijing’s UNESCO sites. The Temple of Heaven is a complex of Imperial religious buildings and was once used for annual prayer ceremonies to ask for a good harvest by the emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties. The temple became a World Heritage Site in 1998. I thoroughly enjoyed wandering around here and absorbing the atmosphere. In many places, including here, on our tour there were quite a few ladies dressed up in traditional Chinese costumes having professional photoshoots, as well as posing for photographs with eager tourists. Little did we know at this point that we would soon be participating in a little dressing up in Chinese costumes ourselves…

The evening entertainment consisted of a visit to an acrobat show in Beijing followed by Beijing’s speciality dish: Peking duck that dates back to the Imperial era. The show lasted for about an hour and was full of tricks, amazing costumes and choreography, along with several edge-of-your-seat moments. The Peking duck meal was delicious and consisted of crispy roast duck layered on thin pancakes coated in sweet bean sauce and vegetables. All the meals we had during our trip came with the option of both chopsticks and forks. Quite a few of us did manage to master the chopsticks well by the end of the trip. There was one night when Alison said there would be no forks, so everyone had to use the chopsticks! It is safe to say that we all enjoyed the evening and were ready to retire back to our hotel and get some sleep before another early start the following morning. I have to say that very annoyingly I would be so tired, get into bed and fall asleep quickly, but then wake up about 3 am and struggle to get back off to sleep – the perils of jetlag!