Beijing Day One

Day one's adventure started with everyone getting up early. A wonderful breakfast with a mix of Chinese and Western like foods. Then off to Tiananmen Square on foot. Beautiful blue skies with crisp morning air. Navigation is pretty straight forward with a lot of english on the signs. Quite a few Chinese speak english surprisingly well. From Tiananmen Square a simple walk to the Forbidden City.

The Forbidden City (shown in picture on right) is amazingly big. The wind picked up and never changed throughout the day. That made it a lot colder then planned, but once committed, hard to turn back. The Forbidden City is a marvel of engineering especially when you consider when it was constructed. This was also our first taste of being hounded by individuals trying to sell their wares. We visited an artist shop and then worked our way through the rest of the city.
From the Forbidden City we walked to the Jingham Park and climbed to the top. This is an awesome view of the city and a great way to see the entire Forbidden City. Benhai park was easy to see and we altered our plans to head directly to Hou Hei District.

After a resonable walking we found the area and started our walk. We then procured a couple of rick shaws and toured the area of alleys and shops. We stopped (part of the con) and visited a real home. This was considered a rich home (shown in picture) and our hotel rooms are practically bigger. Then on to the next where we declined. Moved on to the end of the ride and then got an escort through the shops. We ended up in a porclein factory and got a quick tour and then the hard sell. It was fasinating the silk and tea sets. We plan to shop at the silk market so passed.

Then a search for a cab where we after a little language barrier found our way back to the hotel. The balance of the later afternoon was spent getting a quick snack and thawing out. Plans for dinner are underway, so we'll post a little more after dinner.

Interesting tidbits from the day:

The Forbidden City has 980 Buildings and 8707 rooms

Nine is the largest odd number less than the number 10, so considered both lucky and important

(all gates, doors and woodwork have nails in a 9 x 9 formation)

The cab rides are crazy....unbelievable.. especially with the amount of bikes and pedestrians on the roads.

A twenty minute cab ride is about $3.

We ate at one of the top 10 resturants in the world for dinner tonight for less the $45 for all four of us.