The outgoing Olympic organisers did a wonderful job with colour, pageantry, silver-clad abseilers and aerial trapeze artists. Athletes danced and cheered, and the IOC president declared the games "exceptional".
And London had ... the bus.
It was bound to happen... I am just starting to feel comfortable about the place and it is almost time to go.
I know how the transport system works, I am aware of the limitations of the official press briefings and I have learnt what to avoid at the complimentary media breakfasts.
The Games only go for 16 days and after the swimming program is done, it is a quick slide towards the end.
There may be veteran Olympic journalists here, but every Games are different and Beijing has been what they call "something else".
Grandstand commentantors in Beijing have been exposed to all facets of the cultural experience at the 2008 Olympics.
The photos included in this blog show Tim Gavel calling the action from the canoe-kayak semi-finals in sheeting rain at the Shunyi course.
Tim can also been seen eating a snake on a skewer on Wednesday night as part of a charity challenge to eat 15 foods he had not tried before in 15 days.
The hungry Olympic reporter has a number of options for sating one's appetite.
There's the dining hall in the main press centre with healthy (salad), sort-of-healthy (international cuisine) and not-really-that-healthy (Olympic sponsor fast food outlet).
And a quick trip outside the Olympic zone can put you in a restaurant where the best of Chinese cuisine is available to all (or at least those who can speak/read Mandarin, or find a picture menu!)
But I was feeling adventurous. And I thought I should go off in search of what Olympic fans can experience on the Olympic Green.
Beneath the flame outside the Birds' Nest, I found a concession stand.
It has been a marvellous year for the Spanish with victory at Euro 2008, triumph in the Tour de France with Carlos Sastre and the rise of Rafa Nadal to world number one.
Their performance at the Olympics has also been admirable but the spark has been taken out of their synchronised swimming team who are favourites for a medal in Beijing.
The Spaniards have been banned from wearing a special swimsuit embedded with waterproof lights intended to add a little more spark to their performance.
I fell asleep on an Olympic bus today ... just for a moment.
A text message woke me from a micro-slumber on the way to the track cycling venue.
It is especially fitting, since I have been making sport of taking photos of other people taking a moment out on the Olympic transport system (see photo).
Photographers, volunteers, journalists - everyone is sneaking in aquick snooze where they can.
I only hope the bus driver does not join in.
I don't want to sound like I am standing aloft over other countries' medal tallies (other than China and USA) but other nations must be doing it tough.
The best athletes that a nation can produce have to deal with high expectations.
Take Canada for example.. I overheard some Canadian journalists on a bus the other day comiserating about their teams poor showing so far.
At that point Canada was without a medal despite a quite a few personal best results. One of the journalists said she would have to kill herself if Canada didn't win rowing's mens eight. I assume she was joking.
Well Canada's lot is improving. It moved up to 25th on the overall medal tally today after a bronze medal in the pool.
One Canadian journalist today proudly wrote that there is now no more looking up to Togo or Tajikistan.. so spare a thought today for the Togoans and Tajikistanis..
It has been a long time coming but the media pack has finally turned on the Beijing Olympic Games organisers (BOCOG) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The daily Olympic press conference today was not a polite affair at all - lots of "you're not answering the question".. "let's try again shall we".. and "with respect". BTW.. you know people who say "with respect" have very little respect.
There are a lot of rules at the Olympic Games and plenty of penalties if they are broken.
There is a tribe of people around the Olympic precinct ready to say if you are pushing their boundaries.
You can't go here, you can't go there.. you can only go where your accreditation lets you. No exceptions.
Today at the one of the venues I was repeatedly stopped from recording the fantastic, vibrant sounds of the ecstatic spectators.
Media types at the Beijing Olympic Games are starting to tire and you know that's when mischief starts to happen. Most of the journalists and crew members at the Games are pulling 15 or 16-hour days on average. I have done a 23-hour day myself. Last night I could not help but notice a few language problems on a late bus back to the media village with Malaysian, Polish, Indian, American and French journalists. While it was teeming with rain outside, a sodden American journalist gave his destination to the Chinese Olympic transport volunteer as C-"dry" instead of the usual building name of C-7 or C-5. That "joke" took too long to explain. Then a French man loudly declared that he wanted the bus to be taken to his room.. to his ROOOM! Yep.. we are tiring, but we would not miss it for the world.
Chinese rower Zhang Liang had an Olympics to forget on Saturday, failing to turn up for the men's single sculls and then disqualifed from the doubles.
The hapless Zhang failed to appear in the second heat of the single sculls because he thought he was in the third heat.
Because he didn't show for that event he was automatically disqualified from the doubles, in line with international rowing rules.
Curious to know how many athletes have won an Olympic medal for Australia as well as another country?
Ever wondered what events Mark Spitz won his record seven gold medals in during the 1972 Munich Games?
Can't remember who claimed men's Tennis gold in Athens?
Want to see a graph comparing the winning heights in the women's High Jump from 1928 to 2004?
Have an urge to check out the members of all 12 gold medal-winning USA Basketball teams?
To answer these questions or just quench your thirst for Olympic history be sure to check out our comprehensive Stats page.
The massive collection of Olympic results features stats dating back to the first Olympic Games in 1896 including every event, country and medal-winning athlete.
It's a long and arduous road to the pinnacle of sporting competition at the Olympics, but it can be an equally abrupt finish for many competitors.
Spare a thought for Australia's Erin Carroll, whose Beijing badminton quest was ended in just 22 minutes on Saturday with a straight games loss to Spaniard Yoana Martinez.
Martinez was the fastest out of the blocks and wrapped up the opening game 21-9 and while Carroll fought valiantly in the second game she was beaten 21-16 as her opponent proceeded to the round of 32.
Senegalese fencer Nafi Toure travelled halfway round the world to compete in the Olympic Games, but her Beijing dream lasted just three-and-a-half minutes.
Contrary to very few people's popular opinion, radio reporting is not a glamorous occupation.. and at the Olympics it is downright dirty.
Now that the bulk of the international Olympic media pack is Beijing, the Main Press Centre where I am mostly working from is an extremely noisy place.
It is not suitable at all for recording my voice for stories.
I was running out of options yesterday for PM and it got very close to deadline so I ducked into a small room. It turned out to be the cleaners' cupboard complete with mops, buckets and assorted personal paraphernalia.
I settled on the floor with my recorder and lap top and grabbed a nearby and rather wiffy jacket to cover my head to deaden the echo in the small room.
I'd barely got through the first paragraph when a cleaner tried to get in. Nine other cleaners - and polite, but firm pleas to be allowed to stay - later and I had put my voice down.
I'll be taking no complaints about the quality of my voice that day.
In a few hours the Olympic party will be well and truly underway and what's a decent sporting shindig without some banging tunes to match.
Below is the unofficial Olympics soundtrack - the number one songs on the Australian charts at the start of the last 13 Games - courtesy of ABC Grandstand.
This year's 'gold' goes to 'I Kissed a Girl' by Katy Perry - an interesting choice. The locals will probably be more familiar with 'Nothing' by Pakho Chau which is currently atop the Chinese charts.
Click the link below to see the full playlist.
SBS is hoping to appeal to a cult audience during its threadbare coverage of the Beijing Olympics, with the promise of extended coverage of selected events.
Unlike their counterparts at the host TV broadcaster, Channel Seven, the SBS team of Michael Tomalaris, Craig Foster and Les Murray will provide coverage from the budgetary confines of their Melbourne studio.
But what SBS lacks in variety and on-the-ground reportage, it is sure to make up for with full coverage of the men's cycling road race and the women's road race hot on the heels of its hugely popular telecast of the 2008 Tour de France.
Writes The Australian's DD McNicoll:
As these events both take hours, Seven just hops in and out between crosses to other sports. SBS hopes viewers will be hooked on the drama of the race, just as they were with the recent Tour de France.
What's the world coming to?
This morning, my Beijing Olympic experience rolled along without incident. I made my way through the choking smog in one of the few cars left on Beijing's roads. I passed the anti-aircraft guns, turned left at the pro-Tibet protesters and waved to Channel Nine's reporters who were looking through the wire fences of the Olympic Green.
Continue reading "Sport breaks out in the middle of a news event" »
Without wanting to exaggerate my athletic ability or endurance ... I now have a real appreciation for what the marathon runners will go through at the Beijing Olympic Games.
After arriving in Beijing from chilly Melbourne late the previous night, I woke to see clear skies and none of the smog that has been so well publicised since the Chinese capital was awarded the Games.
What better opportunity to get an appreciation for the city than a leisurely stroll from the Media Village to the Olympic Green, a journey of four kilometres that I expected would take me around 40 minutes to cover.
There is no doubt Beijing has been transformed by the Olympics ... and not just physically.
Sure, the new, sleekly-designed buildings are mindboggling and the exquisitely-designed parks are lovely through the haze, but the people are changing as well.
They know they have arrived at a prime moment in China's modern history and they're flush with funds generated by the nation's booming economy.
A man peering at the wonder which is the Bird's Nest Stadium told me he'd been waiting for the Opening Ceremony for seven years.
I am getting the feeling I am not alone ...
There is more than one Beijing Olympic volunteer waiting on every corner ready to help the hapless visitor navigate around the Games venues.
Six days out from the Opening Ceremony not everyone is here yet to compete, report on or just plain experience the Games, so the huge numbers of blue-clad helpers feels like overkill.
You often see around young eight people standing around a drinks stands not getting any action.
But the volunteers aren't bored or fidgety. They are thrilled to be close to the action at the Olympics and really want to help ... and they are so polite! There are lots of smiles at the many security checks we have to go through and the mantra of "Thank you for your co-operation!" is repeated over and over again.
I don't want to imagine what would happen though if there was no co-operation.
The United States has dominated the gold medal tally in the last three Olympics but Australia's Olympics chief de mission John Coates is tipping that reign to end.
Not surprisingly, Coates has anointed host China as the new superpower.
The Chinese have pumped multi-millions into not only the facilities but also their athletes, and are set to reap dividends.
What we are seeing now leads me to think they can do it. I was at a rowing event where they won eight out of 14 medals - that is unheard of.
However Coates thinks the US will still win the overall medal count because it is much stronger than China in the pool and on the track.
Much has been made of the amount of pollution in Beijing heading into the Olympics.
Many athletes remained concerned about poor air quality and China is endeavouring to allay those concerns by taking more cars off the roads and shutting down more factories.
If these pictures filed by our Olympics reporter Karen Barlow are anything to go by, maybe the athletes will be starting to breathe a little easier.
Grant Hackett knows most athletes gunning for gold in Beijing will be doing so on an unfair playing field.
That's because, he says, drug cheats will not be able to resist the temptation to get their names up in lights.
We would have our heads in the sand to think the Games will be clean and that gets my blood boiling more than anything else in sport. More needs to be done, and that's across the board, to weed out the cheats, and we have to make certain the drug agencies are catching people and not just talking it up. People have been cheating since the start of time to get an unfair edge and sometimes the incentives to cheat in some countries are simply too great.
However Hackett says he will be surprised if an Australian is caught cheating.
You may get away with it in some parts of the world and it's sort of accepted, but I'd hate to think about the publicity (if an Australian) were caught cheating. You would be held in disgrace and fair enough, as the athlete would have crossed the line. The Australian way is to do it on your own merit through hard work and not cheating, and the reaction would be diabolical if you tested positive.
It's time for people to really show their colours in Beijing.
The athletes have started arriving in the Olympic host city and have begun festooning the Olympic Village with their national flags.
The Canadian, Spanish and Czech colours are easy to spot on a quick tour around the village.
Heavy security means you can forget about getting inside unless you're an Olympian or some sort of Olympic essential.
Welcome to Beijing! Those words are written everywhere in the Olympic host city. Well, once you can see them through the thick haze.
Yes, the blight of the Beijing Olympic Games looks like it is hanging around for the sporting events despite the air pollution controls the Chinese authorities brought in a week ago.
The Beijing roads are not exactly clogged with vehicles so that measure appears to be working. I can vouch for the roads, there is a main arterial way flowing outside my hotel.
The talisman of Australia's world champion men's hockey team, Jamie Dwyer, says the Kookaburras squad is united ahead of the Beijing Olympics.
The Kookaburras' initial 23-man squad was cut to 16 for the Olympics, with Athens gold medallists Brent Livermore and Stephen Mowlam among the unlucky seven.
But such is the bond which unites the defending Olympic champions, the squad trains and prepares as 23-man unit - with the selected players working in unison with those who missed the cut.
The Chinese are covering all bases in an effort to put on a more civilised face for the upcoming Olympic Games.
Amongst the numerous government initiatives is "voluntary wait in line day" designed to eradicate the problem of queue-jumping in the capital city.
Citizens are urged to show some courtesy and decorum on the 11th day of every month by waiting patiently in line and not taking part in trademark stampedes for buses and trains.
Volunteers wearing specific red sashes in city squares and on various street corners are on hand to enforce the campaign which promotes the slogan "It's is civilised to queue, it's glorious to be polite."
After their bid for the 2000 Olympics fell agonisingly short 15 years ago, the people of Beijing could argue they have waited long enough.
Was there anyone else out there who saw the temperature forecast for China today? 36 degrees in Beijing and we're still a month out from the Olympics.
I'm sure I saw the weather presenter on CNN smile when she read that number out. She's clearly not going to be competing in the marathon!
No wonder Dr Peter Baquie - the medical director for the Australian Olympic Committee - says it's heat and humidity that could end up being the biggest worry for the 400-strong team that will be competing.
I can't tell you what visibility was like - but maybe CNN might start giving us pollution forecasts as well as we head into the last month.
Being an athlete from the host nation in an Olympic year can be the proverbial double-edged sword.
There are, of course, undoubted benefits that go with this status - not having to travel across the globe to compete, familiarity with the host city and its venues, the rapturous support of the people of your nation and the vast majority of spectators watching your chosen event.
But there can be a significant downside too. If evidence is needed, simply recall the outrageous levels of pressure placed on Cathy Freeman before the Sydney Games in 2000 not only to win her 400 metres track event, but also to be an Australian sporting ambassador, a symbol of the Games as a whole, and even a figure of national reconciliation.
No wonder then that when she crossed the finish line in triumph, the weight of the moment literally took her legs from under her, and Freeman sat, drained, barely able to move as she accepted the congratulations of her rivals.
As China prepares to stage the greatest event on Earth, it is worth remembering that the Olympic dream has not come without pain for the world's most populous nation.
That pain coincided with my first real participation in the Olympic world, on September 23, 1993.
I was working in Sydney as a cadet reporter for The Australian newspaper, and roughly 20 of my fellow cadets and I were down at Circular Quay in the early hours of the morning for the big announcement from Monte Carlo of who would host the 2000 Olympics.
As the minutes ticked down, Kerri-Anne Kennerley - broadcasting from the top of the Overseas Passenger Terminal overlooking the harbour - told us that regardless of the result, everyone should be really proud of what Sydney had done.
Many of us began to get that sinking feeling that the organisers knew something we didn't, and that the Sydney bid had fallen a little short of the mark.
