Forbidden City and surrounding areas

Sunday was fun. I got to go to the Forbidden City again which is always a good time. I think before I go home I will probably spend one full day there just walking around the areas I still have not seen and some of the museums they just opened up. This time we got to go up on the Tiananmen gate which provided a phenomenal view of Tiananmen Square and Beijing in general. They security was very tight though. You had to check all bags and there were many cameras watching you. My guess is that they are very worried about people defacing the large picture of Mao which is pretty accessible from the gate or just scattering leaflets across Tiananmen Square.













We headed to a garden I had never been to on one side of the Forbidden City which was a nice change. It was beautifully setup and there was also a memorial to Dr. Sun Wat-Sen who was one of the leaders of the revolution back in the early 20th century. The garden was pretty low key with a lot of people just sitting around and enjoying all the greenery. We did this for a while then decided to head up to Hou Hai for some cold beer.

After spending 20 minutes finding a cab which was bizarre we got to sit in the found cab for 45 minutes to get approximately one mile. You have to love Beijing traffic. Hou Hai was pretty cool. I have never been there during the day and it was worth going to. The lake was beautiful with many boats and people enjoying the nice weather. We sat on the patio and had some beer while watching people paddleboat around.

Then we headed to WangFuJing to grab some Olympic clothes and walked down to Li Qun from there. For someone who works out every day my father complains about walking a whole hell of a lot. In all fairness to him though Aunt Barb complained about the exact same walk going the opposite direction and she teaches yoga. Maybe it is something about lots of exercise making you less likely to walk because you are getting your exercise from other sources.

We had dinner at Li Qun duck restaurant where I managed to piss off the hostess enough that she did not want to bring us what we asked for in terms of food. After a little cajoling though we got what we wanted and my dad loved it. He ate his plate and most of mine. I think he had been pretty starving at that point because he had not been a big fan of any of the restaurants we had eaten at before. The one overly “authentic” experience was a fish jumping out of the plastic bag the waitress was carrying it in unto his lap. I thought it was pretty funny but he was not as amused as I was.

After that we decided to head home.