Forbidden City
I woke at 0100, then 0400 before waking up properly at 0615. That’s not a bad night’s sleep after a longhaul night flight.
D had arrived from Dali at 0100 and slept in while we had breakfast at 0730.
The plan for the day was to go to the Forbidden City, a first for both D and Jo. We left the hotel at 0830 and got to the drop-off around 0930 where we had to walk about 20 mins to the ticket checkpoint at Wumen.
We got through the ticket check and security pretty quickly and were in the first courtyard at 1000.
Built in 1420, the Forbidden City served as the imperial palace for the Ming emperors before being taken over by the Qing dynasty. Most of what we see today is from the Qing dynasty due to fire and destruction of earlier buildings. It housed 24 emperors over 500 years/
The first significant building we saw was extensively scaffolded. We continued our exploration largely along the central axis of the complex, taking a look into the several throne rooms.
About 50 mins later, as we approached the far end of the site, we took a rest before heading to the one side of the complex which housed the less important people that lived there, such as officers, concubines and eunuchs.
The route took us to a garden, after which we made exited through the northern gate around 1140.
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- Oh, the humanity! In the Forbidden City.
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- In the Forbidden City.
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- One of several throne rooms, made more interesting with our late cats sleeping on the throne.
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- Forbidden City. This is one the zone for the plebes (officials, eunuchs, concubines etc).
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- Forbidden City. This is one the zone for the plebes (officials, eunuchs, concubines etc).
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- The Qing Dynasty was not Chinese but Manchu, hence the Manchu script on the right hand side of the board.
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- View exiting the Forbidden City through the northern exit.
Hutong lunch
D took us by rideshare to a hole-in-the-wall kind of place in a hutong where we had a delicious noodle soup and a local-style sandwich. We took a walk in the neighbourhood after that and Jo tried out the local door-less public toilet.
We returned to the hotel around 1400 to rest until heading out for dinner. As we didn’t have any belly-space for meat skewers last night, we thought it would be a good idea to try that tonight.
D found place some distance away, giving us a further taste of Beijing traffic there and back.