Beijing, China | January 2019

And then it was onto the main feature of our holiday... China... Oma had been hoping for a family trip to China for many years, and so we were all very excited to spend the next 10 days or so with all of the family in Beijing, Shanghai, Macau and Hong Kong.

For our first night in Beijing (we arrived earlier than the rest of the family after flying via Finland) we found a Mongolian Beef place which was great.

We were in China just in time for the Year of the Pig celebrations...so we did manage to get lots of photos of Claire with cute pigs (she's born of the year of the Pig).

We explored the market and food street, though none of us were brave enough to try the more extreme snacks on offer!

The next morning, the tour officially began, and what followed was lots and lots and lots of family photos!  Daddy was enjoying being the 'white-photographer' which did get some attention from the other tourists!

First stop was Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City.

The Temple of Heaven

The Olympic venues - The Bird's Nest and Water Cube

The key highlight from the tour of Beijing was a trip to the Great Wall... It was astounding to get a glimpse of the wall, and to start to appreciate just how remote and large the construction project was.  We managed to walk a few kilometers along the top, which is a tiny portion of the 21,196km in total!

Whilst not shown, we also rode a gondola to get upto the wall, and tobogganed down again.  Whilst it was very cold (near 0 degrees), the bright sun and lots of walking meant stripping off the thick layers to avoid cooking ourselves!

The next stop was the Summer Palace, which ironically features a large lake which is frozen over at this time of year.  We'd never see a frozen lake before, so it was very impressive.

More so because we were able to first walk out onto the lake, and then secondly skate on sleds in the middle of the lake! 

Whilst it was fun...it was a little scary as you could hear the constant movement of the ice below, and large booming sounds of different parts of the ice cracking and reforming...

Other highlights from Beijing was that we ate a lot (and I mean a lot) of Xiao long bao... at every opportunity we could.  We also bought some cool Chinese New Year lego.  But then it was time to head on to Shanghai... and a rare opportunity to see the entire family on a plane together.