If you read my earlier post, you already know that I got lost on my way to the famous Forbidden City and wandered around in the gardens and then around the moat of the city. I never actually understood that I missed the Forbidden City until I saw this:

the moat around the forbidden city

I really thought that at the gate “just around the corner” they will let me in… Hell no! They made me walk all the way around and back, as the gate on this side is just for exiting…

the “exit” gate

At that point I was walking for around 3 hours. The idea of going back just to enter the damn Forbidden City was not appealing at all. But I am a very determined person… I’ll take it back.. I am crazy… So I marched back, cursing Chinese Emperors since the beginning of time and their descendants who  came up with the idea of exit and entrance gates. By then I hated China, Beijing, the Forbidden City and my manager who sent me here.

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Finally I arrived to the correct gate and bought the ticket. Well, me and 100 billions of Chinese tourists, who visited the Forbidden city at the same time. I was not a happy person then. But I remembered that I promised Mr some photos, so I took out my camera, which by that time seemed to weight around 100 kg, cursed everyone around me and stepped into the city.

The first thought that hit me was, why didn’t it ever occur to the Emperors of China to plant some trees in the Forbidden City… everywhere you looked was stone pavement. It was like walking on the hot pan.

At any other occasion I would have been very impressed. I look at the photos now and see how magnificent the Forbidden city is… I hope you, dear reader, will have or already had more pleasant experience of this magnificent architectural wonder, and I hope you will appreciate these photos, that costed me, my shoulders, my back and my feet dearly.

Tiananmen square from the back

Easy, right?! Not so much, if you are dealing with me….

I guess it’s only me who can get lost and not get to the Forbidden city when I was dropped off right at the gate of the Forbidden city in Beijing… but I managed to do just that….

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I walked a bit on the Tiananmen square, which is just a huge square with thousands of people, and then headed to the Forbidden city… Here are some photos from the square:

A building that looks like something borrowed from Soviet union

A monument on the Tienanmen square

Pretty flowers on the square

They like big screens in China, so the red rectangular things in the back are two giant screens showing some patriotic films

The Tienanmen gate to the Forbidden city

A very smart looking soldier (have no clue if it was ok to take a photobut I had a tele-lens)

When I crossed the big road from Tienanmen square to the gates of the Forbidden city, I saw 5 arches. The big one, right under the portrait of some old dude, and two smaller ones on each side. As everywhere in Beijing there were millions of people going in all directions, and it was equal amount of people going in all five arches… so I went to a smaller one closest to me…WRONG!!!!

Here are the arches and the portrait of some leader

After paying for the ticket, walking for 2,5 hours, and thinking about how “non – impressive” the Forbidden city was, and then walking out and going for 45 minutes only to discover that the big moat surrounding a stone wall with actual forbidden city… which I couldn’t get in to. It turned out that the smaller arches led to the gardens AROUND the Forbidden city!!! I walked more to find a massive gate on the other side of the moat was only for the exit, and I had to go back and around for another 45 minutes to get to the entrance gate.

Needless to say, when I finally got the actual entrance to Forbidden city, I had bloody blisters on my fit, my back was hurting from all the photo gear and I cursed all Chinese Emperors 5000 years back for the stupid way the build stuff… but I promised Mr to take pictures of Forbidden city, so I swallowed my pain and hate for Chinese Emperors and went on to explore their place of  residence. I managed to take some nice pictures as well..

I have to say that the gardens that I walked for the first 2,5 hours were very pretty too, I was just very pissed of afterwords that they weren’t actually what I hoped they will be… I still think you will enjoy them, so here are some photos…

The photos of actual Forbidden city will be published in the next post.

View from hotel window

The people are, however, as lovely as usual and the food is just amazing.

Tonight we had a lovely quick dinner at a chip canteen in the basement of our office. The basic idea there is that you pick up the stuff you want and they satay it for you. I have never seen half of the ingredients in my life, but it tasted divine.

The dinner from a Chinese canteen

I also got to taste the warm soy bean milk with dades at the place called Bean House, which tasted pretty amazing..

The dade soy milk

So far so good, although this is all of the sightseeing I was able to do so far… maybe better luck in the following days…