China Vacation: Day 3

Today we stuck to the city and rode the subway A LOT!  After chatting with the kids online and another yummy breakfast (which I didn’t have to make, I will sure miss that) we headed to the Forbidden City.  The lines were incredibly long to get into the city so we almost turned back around with the intent to come back the next day.  We decided to cross over to Tiananmen Square and just as we got over there the police were opening up a tunnel entrance to go underneath the street.  We headed through the tunnel and realized that it was a security check.  Turns out that there was an ‘incident’ just a few days ago so security was really high and that was the reason for the super long lines right in front of the entrance to the Forbidden City.  We just happened to luck out that they opened the tunnel so that saved us at least 45 minutes of waiting in the other security lines. 

Here’s the view of Tiananmen Square taken from across the street from it, near the Forbidden City entrance.  Not that great of a picture but it’s proof we were there. 

The Forbidden City was just enormous.  We would see one of these huge Halls, walk around it and down some stairs into a big courtyard (pictured below). 

Then we would walk across the huge courtyard up to another Hall, around it, then down more stairs into yet another gigantic courtyard.  It just went on and on.  There was even a cool moat in one area. 

There were tons of cool lion statues.  The males have a paw on a ball and the females have a paw on a cub. 

We saw a beautiful carving on a wall called the Nine Dragon Screen.  Very cool. 

Here’s a close up of one of the gold dragons. 

This lion stuck a paw in a light socket.  

It took us a good 3 hours to explore the Forbidden City.  There were so many people there, but we didn’t feel crowded.  Just shows you how enormous the city was.  I kept telling Mark it sure paid to be king back then. 

We headed to two towers that our concierge recommended we see which was in walking distance of the Forbidden City.  We walked through a pretty park (which wasn’t free to walk through) to get there.  On our way through we saw a famous tree that some dude hung himself from.  It was worthy enough to get a plaque and everything. 

We had to walk down a really clean and amazing-smelling street to get to the towers (enter sarcasm here).  I tried not to look too closely to the puddles near the base of the trees along the street and I would hold my breath when walking past the tiny restaurants.  But it was worth it to see this really cool old tower which housed a massive bell.  

Here’s the bell inside.  FYI, it took 75 stairs to get to the belfry.  Some stats of this ginormous bell: 23 feet tall, 11 feet in diameter at the lower part, almost a foot thick and weighs 63 tons.  Pretty incredible, huh?

We laughed at this sign.  Wouldn’t you want to throw something at it too just to hear what the bell sounds like?

We finished up at the bell tower and were exhausted.  We ended up heading back to the hotel around 4 and ordering room service (pizza again) and then headed up to the executive lounge for some fresh bread and cheeses.  A little European, I know, but the bread was delicious.  Sadly, the lounge didn’t have Nutella that we could smother the bread in.  The cheese had to do.  I almost forgot to mention the air quality here.  The news always talks about the air quality here in Beijing.  Our first full day here it was great; pretty clear and we had great air up in the mountains on the Great Wall.  According to the air quality index that Mark looked up on his phone, Friday’s air quality was “Good” at 60.  Today’s air quality was “Unhealthy” at 180.  Big difference, right?  I hate to see what tomorrow brings.  I’m pretty sure sucking on our car’s tailpipe would be healthier.