I've never attended a Boccia match before. A Paralympic final in which GB takes on the Portuguese reigning champions is not a bad place to start. Across between lawn bowls and petanque, there's more to Boccia than first meets the eye. It's played by athletes with many different disabilities but especially those with cerebral palsy. Despite long analytical pauses between shots, the combination of dexterity, tactical nous and competitive drive makes this a far more absorbing sport to watch than you might think.
When ParalympicsGB added to their impressive gold medal haul with a comfortable victory, the atmosphere amongst the British contingent was as wild as any you'll find.
And I found myself screaming and hollering as loud as anyone else.
Over to the Tennis centre where another Brit, Peter Norfolk, won the Wheelchair Tennis singles championship in style. 
I'm told there were more spectators in the centre court than when Nadal took on Federer just a couple of weeks earlier. They were certainly rewarded with athleticism, speed around the court and elegance of shot making. If young Ellie Simmonds was breaking records in the pool as GB's youngest ever gold medallist it was just as good to see an evergreen Paralympian at the other end of the athletic age scale.
Rehearsals for London 2012's Handover segment left little time to check out the athletics in the Bird's Nest, but late one evening I had an hour free on the way back into Beijing and caught the last two events in the schedule. First there was David Weir's heroic 1,500 metres gold medal for ParalympicsGB – and then the remarkable Oscar Pistorius from South Africa coolly shattered the world record in the 400 metres. High octane stuff and now I'm hook, line and sinker for the 'Paralympics are special' brigade.
Beijing was certainly more relaxed than when the Olympic Games were in town - but don't confuse that with any lack of competitive edge, determination or passion. There's already plenty of evidence of the transformative effect of the games on attitudes to disability here too. In a country where it is said that disability was too often hidden away there now plenty of very public Paralympic heroes. When a Chinese Paralympian is vying for medals in one of the huge stadiums, the volume and passion of the screams of support are ear shattering.
Some describe the Paralympic Games as the very essence of great amateur sport – others talk about the inspiration of every athletes individual journey to elite sporting achievement. I saw a slightly different demonstration of the same essence.
Back in the Opening Ceremony, an 11-year-old ballet dancer from Sichuan Province featured in a particularly emotional sequence. Just a couple of months ago Li Yue was at school when many floors of the building above collapsed directly on top of her. The earthquake meant many others didn't come out at all. Li Yue escaped but lost a leg. 
She captured many hearts with her solo in the National Stadium and one of them was that of Mark Brew – a guest dancer with CandoCo, one of the two dance groups creating our cast in the London Handover sequence.
Ten years ago Mark was a rising star of South African Ballet when a car crash left him permanently without the use of both legs. First convinced his career was over, he began to rebuild life dancing from a wheelchair. Now in huge demand as a dancer and choreographer all around the world, Mark is at the top of his profession.
At Mark's request we contacted Li's family to see if they would let Mark tell her his story. Twenty four hours later we found ourselves in a southern suburb of Beijing at a special rehabilitation hospital for amputees and those with spinal injuries. I can't do justice to the meeting that happened, but after an hour or so of increasingly animated conversation between Mark and Yue, they entertained a crowd of nurses with an impromptu wheelchair pas de deux in the hospital corridor. Even those with hearts of stone would have admitted to moist eyes that morning.
Back in the UK it was clear that the Paralympic magic fired us all up too. Well over five thousand schools created their own special events to mark the moment of Handover when the Parlaympic Games came home to the UK. There were big events at Live Sites across the UK and those watching the big screen in Trafalgar Square could watch another Nelson on his temporary column half way around the world on the famous London bus in the Bird's Nest Stadium.
London's Handover segment concluded with a procession out of the stadium. We were determined it should be led by great GB Paralympian medallists – and how great it was to see David Weir, Ellie Simmonds and the Boccia team, along with David Roberts and Shelley Roberts, out in front. Right behind them were our dancers - including one Mark Brew. I can only hope that Li Yue was watching.
