December in Beijing and Harbin

Check out the video I made for Harbin this month if you would like to see more

Halfway through the month Jodie and I went to Beijing to pick up her boyfriend. Once we got off our train we headed to see Tiananmen Square and on our way there we were almost adopted by a Chinese family that wanted us to have some coffee and explore Beijing with them. We thought that it would be a great idea to cycle to Tiananmen Square without realising that you can't actually leave your bikes anywhere nearby. Every stop we were told by security to keep cycling and ended up cycling for a further mile before we were allowed to stop and leave our bikes.

Before going, we had heard of the Friends cafe in Beijing. After cycling around Beijing for an hour we thought that we had arrived in the right place where we had to go through this fancy narrow street however, there was an old homeless man that came up to us trying to ask us for money and ended up grabbing Jodie's arm! We continued our hunt to find the cafe. Soon after our escape, we found a mall underground where we thought the Friends cafe could be but much to our disappointment the mall was huge with only a few people still walking through it with no lights on. After the latest incident we thought we’d accept defeat and find a place to eat. Being naive as we were we thought that Beijing prices would be the same price as our meals in Tianjin but we were very wrong. After hours of exploring trying to find a non-existent cafe and cheap restaurants, we resulted in going to a 7/11, buying a steamed bun and eating outside in the cold.

Once the clocks hit 11pm we thought it would be best to depart and make our way to the airport to collect Jodie’s boyfriend. We got to the station where we could get the airport express but we’d missed the last train by a few minutes! Instead of getting in a taxi to the airport, as students, we wanted to save as much money as possible, so we hopped onto some bikes and started to cycle there. We cycled about 15km up hills, carrying our bikes up and down stairs until it got to about 2am in the morning where we once again accepted defeat and then got in a taxi for the final leg of our journey.

The weekend before Christmas a group of us headed up to Harbin to face the freezing temperatures and see the ice sculptures. On our first day of the weekend trip we visited Volga Manor which is a huge area of land with various Russian inspired buildings. The following day we went to Harbin Ice and Snow World which made us feel like we were in a movie with a village made out of ice and ice sculptures lit up in bright colours.