The speed with which the city has transformed some of the better-known stadiums into multi-purpose venues open to the ticket-buying public and often also available for hire, has been impressive. Indeed, their ability to draw on the status of the National Stadium (Bird’s Nest), National Aquatics Center (Water Cube), the National Indoor Stadium (the other one) and the Olympic Green area that connects the three, and mold them into a money-earning tourist site over the recent October holidays should offer lessons to future Olympic cities. This year’s Golden Week holidays saw the number of tourists visiting Beijing jump by more than 30% and the Olympic venues were the star attractions. Over the seven-day holiday, the Olympic center received 2.42 million visitors, which accounted for over .25% of the total number of visits to all of Beijing’s 21 most popular tourist sites Numbers peaked on Oct 2 when 527,000 people visited the Olympic Center. The Forbidden City only received 625,000 visitors over the whole seven-day period. But after this final flurry of Olympic-inspired attention from the public, what does the medium to long-term future of the Olympic venues look like?

Good news for those who were disappointed to discover tickets to the Paralympic swimming events have already sold out. An article in today’s Beijing News quotes a spokesperson from the Olympic ticketing center as saying that it's likely that more tickets to events at the Bird’s Nest and the Water Cube will be made available in the next few days. Maybe the appearance of extra tickets has something to do with the 350,000 “spectators” that were being brought in to make sure that there were no empty seats at events?

In even more exciting news Xinhua reports, not only will the Bird’s Nest, Water Cube and Olympic Park be opened up to tourists during the upcoming National Day Holidays, but, by the end of the year, we'll all be able to go swimming at the Water Cube. Vice Mayor of Beijing Chen Gang was quoted as saying that the Water Cube will be turned into an aquatic amusement park that will be open by the end of the year.

The above image of a young Chinese girl leaping into the air as fireworks explode above Tiananmen Square is included in the New York Times coverage of the closing ceremony. The Guardian also has some spectacular images from the final gala performance on their website.

 You can view a gallery of images from the event over at the official Beijing 2008 website, the Boston.com includes a nice little video of a time lapse photo and Xinhua have also collected their pics of the show here.

Last week we uploaded some pictures of the impressive fireworks display that lit up the Bird's Nest on July 16 as part of a rehearsal of the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. Since then more videos of the fireworks display have emerged, that allow you to take a look at the rehearsal from up close, far away, from a moving car (with the stereo on) or slide show-like highlights of the best stills. More details about the huge fireworks display were revealed at a BOCOG press conference held yesterday. For full details of what the display will involve you can look at the full text of the press conference, however two details caught out attention.

According to Xinhua, a climax of the display will be the firing of 2008 smiley faces fireworks (pictured above)into the air above the Bird's Nest. The smiley faces are in keeping with the pictures of 10,000 smiling faces that Zhang Yimou has already revealed will be integrated into the opening ceremony.

T3 – No, not the Arnold Schwarzenegger film but the Beijing Airport’s new mega-terminal -- opened for flights last night at midnight.

The massive new airport has 3 concourses:

Concourse C will be for:

-- Domestic check-in
-- Domestic Departures
-- Domestic baggage claim
-- International check-in
-- International baggage claim

Concourse D will be for:

-- Olympic and Paralympic Games charter flights (for the time being)

Concourse E will be for:

-- International departures
-- International arrivals