Who says its forbidden??
Trip Start
Oct 16, 2009
1
3
Trip End
Nov 01, 2009
Beijing, China
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
So our exploring continued with the Forbidden City and Tianammen Square in Beijing.
We were not quite expecting what we saw at The Forbidden City as it is such a large place, the buildings are so amazing and very colourful - through one square into another and another and so on. The emperor had a building for every part of his day and life!!! There were 9,999 rooms (not surprisingly we did not visit them all!!) Hard to believe that for over 500 years the chinese people were not allowed anywhere near this city let alone enter it.... Now it seems the whole country is in there - it was PACKED with the orange baseball cap brigade (we thought this looks very degrading but helps the many tour leaders to identify their group - thankfully we are not on a managed tour such as those and we can look after ourselves - phew...)
Tiannammen Square is a very large place and quite sobering to think of the many students that lost their lives there not so long ago, now though it is a very lively and again full of chinese wanting to pay their respects to the Chairman Mao's mummified body.
We then took a snooze in the Jian Park behind the Forbidden City which was very quiet and peaceful (don't think our bodies have quite caught up yet!)
In the afternoon we boarded our overnight train to Xi'an (which is where we are now). The overnight train experience is one not to be forgotten but exceeded our expectations, it is certainly a very sociable way to travel and gave us an opportunity to get to know our tour pals over a few games of cards!! Sadly the lights are turned off at 10pm and consequently we had the earliest night yet of this trip.... Not that meant we actually got much sleep though....
So this morning we woke up in Xi'an and our travels continue......
