Day 71 September 25th - Beijing - The Forbidden City
Photos of Beijing can be seen here
Arriving in Beijing was a relief although I had no idea which of the 12 bus stations I was at and at 5am it is hard to find someone who speaks English to help you out! I jumped on a bus and managed to get someone to tell me to get off where a subway station was (after 20 mins and going through about 8 people). The subway is a relief because the station names are in English and Chinese. My target destination was my friends station Wudaokou as I was staying at his house. I managed to get there by about 7:30 which was good, grabbed some breaky then gave him a call.
As we were leaving on Friday at midday and it was Tuesday it was straight into the sightseeing. After lunch i decided to go the Tiananmen square and the forbidden city. They are both huge, imagine a corridor about 700m wide about about 2km long and it is like that with Tiananmen Square in the south and the forbidden city taking up about 1.5km to the north. Check this map out. This is the center of Beijing and where most of the historic buildings from the Mao Dynasty are. Tiananmen square is bustling, there were people milling around everywhere pretty much all tourists because the only buildings around there are government buildings.
The forbidden city is a must when you visit Beijing it is a real highlight although they were restoring parts of it for the Olympic games. The forbidden city is a massive palace complex, but very different to European palaces, it is very grand but basic inside at the same time. So there is a lot of effort put into the buildings but It the contents were quite elegant and simple. This is much like other sights I have visited in Asia it is really quite minimalist in terms of possessions but the encasing is exquisite.
I walked in under the watchful eye of Chairman Mao through the gate of heavenly peace. I always have a smirk at he lovely names they have for monuments, highways and border crossings. I thought that this was the entrance but this is the outer gate and you have to walk through about three to get into ‘The Forbidden City’. The restorations took away from some of the grandeur with scaffolding encasing most of the high towers, however the buildings were still breathtaking. The attention to detail is amazing for something so big. Being on a tight schedule I wanted to climb a hill outside the north gate so that I could look over the city for sunset. This was well worth it and the view although hazy was amazing.
That night back at Weh’s place his flatmate was cooking some dinner, this was just what I needed a home cooked meal and the first one in a long long long time. Being from Israel he cooked some great Israeli food which really hit the spot. The next day it was off to the great wall so so what better way to prepare than on a full stomach.
Tags>> Beijing China Forbiden City Great Wall Tiananmen Square Wudaokou
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