Southeast Asia: Beijing Day Three - The Forbidden City

We woke up at our new hotel and walked over to the Forbidden City which took about a half hour. The entrance was a huge concrete wall with a huge temple on the top overlooking a huge courtyard full of people. Chairman Mao's picture is on the wall at the entrance. He was the man who founded The People's Republic of China. Dad wanted a family picture so we asked somebody to take one and all of the sudden a ton of other random people were taking pictures of us. (It might have been Zaddek's and Sage's blonde hair but it was a little weird.)

After taking some photos we went through the entrance and came out to another gigantic courtyard bigger than the first one with another big temple at the other end. After going through the crowd all heading to the other end we went through yet another huge courtyard with temples and buildings at each side. So once again we walked all the through the courtyard.

We took a side tunnel and explored the vast city of temples and buildings. It seemed crazy that it was a huge labyrinth of temples just for an emperor. Every little design was beautiful but it was a lot to take in all at once.

 The Iron Bulls are said to stop and protect against flooding and were originally kept at the Summer Palace. After exploring a bit longer we started to head for the exit. It took us awhile to get back but once we found our way out we walked back to the hotel for lunch.

(We passed by this beautiful river on the way back to the hotel)

Once we got back Dad and I went to find some lunch so Mom, Sage, Kaden and Zaddek could have a break. We ate and headed out again. This time to the Temple of Heaven.

 The Temple of Heaven was one of the tallest temples we had seen so far and had some of the most beautiful blue and indigo colours. The Temple of Heaven was used to pray to the Heavens for good harvest in the year to come and was built in 1406 to 1420.

We continued on to the Temple of Heaven complex with a few other temples, a beautiful marble altar and the Echo wall or Whispering wall with the angle and brick overhang so your voice echoes around the entire wall.

After we finished looking around we started to double back to the exit where our hotel advised us to exit and where all of the taxis were but Dad decided we should exit out the south side instead since that's where we were. He thought we could just come back in and head to the east side if there weren't any there but when we exited the Temple of Heaven they stamped our tickets useless so we couldn't get back in. There were no van taxis so we walked around the corner trying to find the east exit from the streets. We doubled back after half an hour of walking and squeezed into a small car with Mom, Sage, Kaden, Zaddek, and I squished in the back.

We got back to the hotel and went to a great restaurant to experience Chinese style eating. There was a huge lazy Susan in the middle of the table that spun around with a bunch of delicious dishes like vegetable spring rolls and veggie potstickers. After we finished Mom, Dad and Sage took us to the night market with the scorpions on sticks. Some of them were still alive. We got back to the hotel and went to bed shortly ready for our adventure to the Great Wall.
   

Taxis: 1 van and 1 small car

Total miles walked: 6.3 miles