We slept quite well on the train (no snoring, no children) and in the morning all four of us set about trying to work out where our respective hostels were. It seemed that they were fairly close to each other so we all took the metro together to Xisi (pronounced a bit like Caesar) in Xicheng district. We were all quite excited about being in Beijing for Chinese New Year, however none of us had been able to find any major celebrations, so we swapped email addresses in the hope that one of us would find something and let the others know, add then we would all meet up. Then we went our own separate ways to our respective hostels.

We found ours (the Fish Inn) fairly quickly (good directions/map by email) down a maze of hutongs (alleyways). When we got there, our room wasn't yet ready and so we dumped our bags and headed out to explore for a bit. We were just going to look at the local area and find our way around but we saw a road called Xi'anmen Dajie (street) so we thought we'd wander down there. First we came across a big and very pretty church. We kept on walking until we eventually reached the Forbidden City - long walk! We walked around the north end, all the way down the east side, and then to the centre of the south wall. We then turned south, through the Gate of Heavenly Peace to Tianan'men Square. It's big. Clearly built to impress. We walked all of the way down through Tianan'men - three hours of walking in total.

We had lunch at the top of Qianmen Street and made our way back to the hostel to check in. Our room is nice and clean, and has underfloor heating which is very nice. Next up...nap. We napped for a couple of hours and then headed out for dinner. By this point the fireworks, which had been going off all day, were now in full swing. We had a nice dinner in a restaurant which specialises in Chinese casseroles. It was full of families having a new year's dinner.

After dinner, we walked pretty much the same route as this afternoon - another three hours of walking, only this time surrounded by an insane amount of fireworks. It seemed that every household was setting fireworks off in the road, in the alleys, basically everywhere. By ten o'clock, we were sitting in McD's (only thing open) having a hot chocolate to warm up again. Then we got the metro home again. We went to bed with no hope of sleep with all the bangs. At midnight, we went back out to absolute chaos. We had to weave around fireworks and people everywhere. We stood and watched hundreds of fireworks from different points for about an hour and a half without let up. With it not slowing down, we went back to bed at half past one. Amazing experience!