Competition actually began on Wednesday, with group games in the football taking place, but last night’s spectacular opening ceremony marked the formal start of the XXIX Olympiad.
And Beijing basically came to a stop yesterday, particularly in areas around the main stadium.
Anyone attempting to get any where in the city yesterday found it difficult.
It took me over an hour-and-a-half to get from my hotel to the Olympic complex first thing in the morning via public transport – and it is only a distance of about 3km.
And I was told it was impossible to get back the same way, so I joined the long queue outside the media centre for a taxi.
I waited at least half-an-hour for a taxi and I ended up allowing two members of the BBC Sport’s team to share it, as they were desperately trying to find a way to Tain’anmen Square to get some reaction to the start of the Games.
I am not a taxi person, but I could not believe how cheap they are in Beijing.
Considering how desperate everyone was for a taxi yesterday, I was shocked to find that my journey cost just over £1 – cheaper than a cup of coffee I had bought early in the day.
If I had known that before I would not have spent an hour-and-a-half sweating buckets – it was by far the hottest day so far since I have been in Beijing - lugging my heavy laptop on two tubes and a bus in the morning.
I spent the day at the media centre as the Great Britain diving squad were holding their only press conference before competition gets underway this weekend.
All 10 Great Britain divers were present, including Plymouth’s Tom Daley and Tonia Couch.
Daley was the centre of attention, with most of the 100 or so journalists and photographers packed into the conference room all there to get some quotes or pictures from him.
It was incredible the way he handled the situation. Most of the other divers were intimidated by the amount of press, photographers and television cameras from all over the world. But Tom looked perfectly at ease, although Tonia was far more nervous when she was asked a question.
Tonia has not had as much practice as Tom at dealing with situations like that and she looked quite uncomfortable when the spotlight found its way to her. Yet she did seem more relaxed towards the end.
However, what the athletes probably don’t realise is that journalists also find those large press conferences situations quite intimidating. Just like the competitors, they also don’t want to make fools of themselves in front of so many people and live television cameras.
I did, though, take the microphone and asked Tom and Tonia a couple of questions as it was the only chance I was going to get.
I am now beginning to get to grips with Beijing – if not the language or how to cross a road.
You really do take your life into your hands trying to get to the other side of any major roads in the city. I have come to the conclusion that they have a system similar to that in America where cars can turn right even when the traffic lights are on red.
But what makes it worse is that some of the roads are about 10 lanes wide. You can find yourself in the middle and suddenly cars – and bikes - start coming.
As you would expect there are quite a lot of bikes around the city and on the corner of the street where my hotel is there is a man offering a tyre repair services.
This service basically involves him spending the entire day manually pumping up tyres for push and motor bikes with a hand pump.
He always seems to have a customer there whenever I pass, so obviously he provides a popular service, but I can’t imagine how tiring in it doing that in heat and humidity that Beijing is experiencing at the moment.
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