Beijing Day 2

Zach and I grabbed our bags and checked out of our hotel by 9:30 am. We tried to get a cab to take us to our new hotel, but we'd made the mistake of not writing down the name of the hotel we were going to stay at. We wound up hoofing it the 1.5 miles to Tian'an Men and the hotel because whenever we tried to tell a cab we wanted to go to Tian'an Men, the thought we wanted a tour.

After checking into our hotel (which we found out that they were showing us a more expensive room, but Zach got them down to the price we thought they were asking), we decided to venture out. We explored Tian'an Men for a while, looking at the sculptures of the Olympic Mascots, then decided to head to the Forbidden City. We discovered, to our surprise, our ISIC's got us into the Forbidden City for 20 qui, as opposed ot the 60 qui it normally takes. That card paid for itself in Beijing alone.

The Forbidden City is, in one word, AMAZING. We spent two days in there and didn't even make it through half of the city. The first day we stopped and saw the Hall of Art and Calligraphy, which was incredibly awe inspiring. I can't imagine making art like that. Such detail, and some of the scrolls only showed about 8 feet of their full length. There was a poem on dark wood panels that was carved in Jade. You'll just have to look at my pictures to get the full effect of the Forbidden City. The awesome thing? The Chinese have no compunctions about letting you take pictures or video. Snap away! (As long as there are no police in the picture).

For dinner, we decided that because we were so tired, we would just walk to McDonalds for dinner and call it an early night.