Like a London bus, you wait for a great Londonist photo gallery and then three come at once. Well, in Beijing, there definitely was a bus. There was also a Beckham. There was a Boris. There was an apparently ununfurlable and tricky-to-wave flag. There was a football. There were two little girls. There was a funky film. There was some dancing. There was a Leona Lewis and some guy from Led Zeppelin. And suddenly, there......

Pictures below from a sneaky preview visit to the site for tomorrow's 'Visa London 2012 Party' on the Mall, which is happening right in front of Queenie's Front Room. Feverish activity seems to be going on to get the stage, the set and back-of-site operations built in time. If you got your mitts on one of the 40,000 tickets through the public ballot for this, then enjoy the celebrations to mark the handover from Beijing......

On Friday, the best place to watch the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games is probably in the Bird's Nest Stadium. If you've mislaid your £373 ticket down the back of the sofa, there are still heaps of other options beside vegging at home and picking at a warmed-up chinese ready meal in front of the telly. The ceremony kicks off weeks of Olympic and Paralympic sport, with the BBC promising to......

The Beijing 2008 Olympics is officially 'over' on the evening of 24th August, when the closing ceremony takes place in their enormous 'bird's nest' stadium. London gets a few minutes in the ceremony as part of the Handover, which will be shown on big screens hastily put up in London and across UK cities. This happens to be on the early afternoon (in UK time) on the Sunday of the big august bank holiday/Notting......

Ken Livingston's vision of driving a Routemaster to Beijing as a 2012 promotional exercise may have been ditched as a total waste of time and money because of the Sichuan earthquake but the bus itself is still in line to be the star of the handover ceremony at the end of this summer's Games. In fact, it's already on it's way in a container ship. As for the spangly ceremonials, as per the rumours,......