At the far end of Tiananmen Square is the Forbidden City. It was given this name because no one was allowed to enter the city without permission from the emperor.
the courtyard where we bought our entrance tickets
It was by far the most crowded place we visited while in China. There were people everywhere!
The world's largest palace structure and home to 24 emperors, it was built in only 14 years from 1407-1420 by 1 million workers, including 100,000 artisans. It covers 178 acres, has 980 buildings, 90 palaces and courtyards, and 8,700 rooms.
Water was poured on the roads in winter in order the slide the giant stones in on ice. The 33' tall walls are made of lime and glutinous rice bricks cemented with glutinous rice mixed with egg whites. The wall is surrounded by a moat.
The roofs are all yellow, the color of the royal family.
There was a lot to see...
These giant vats were placed everywhere and kept constantly full of water to use in case of a fire. In the winter, fires were lit underneath to keep the water from freezing...
My favorite part was the gardens. They were gorgeous!
Mountain of Accumulated Elegance
It had been a very long day and we were ready to go back...
Our “tour guide” had told us that all we needed to do was get
a taxi back to our hotel. Easy as pie and only about 30-40 kuai. We couldn’t
find any taxis that would stop or said it was too far or wanted 150 kuai. Then
all kinds of people started approaching us and saying they could get us a
driver to take us back to the hotel. One man in particular would not let us
alone. He insisted that we would never get a taxi but that he had a car that
would take us. His son was an Uber driver in a nice American car with air
conditioning. We called our guide and she said we’d better just pay him 100 and
let his son drive us. We said yes, he called his son and we waited. It just
seemed like one of those very bad ideas. Turned out his son was very nice and
did have a very nice Chrysler mini van. He even told us about some of the
things we drove by on the way back in his rather broken English. "Do you understand?" We tipped him even though you aren’t supposed
to…
Sue and I swam, saunaed and showered again. Then we went to the bakery to pick up some treats for dessert, followed by dinner at the same place as the night before. Why mess with a good thing??? :)
