asia - day 15 - the forbidden city
even though we had a snorer in our room, and even though the guy above vince kind of flew off the handle and screamed something in chinese in the middle of the night to stop the snoring, and even though there was so much cigarette smoke that i had to bury my head in the blankets, i had a great sleep. what was wonderful about the train ride was that we arrived pretty much as soon as we woke up. in fact, we had to rush off the train. i was a little disoriented when we got out of the busy station. there was such an expanse of space and i had no idea which direction we were facing. vince is never happy with me when i say we have to walk but don't know where we are. 
when i got my bearings, we walked over to the hotel. a well reviewed novotel. the lobby was very spacious and we got upgraded to a huge suite. novotel also gave us little mooncakes as our honeymoon gift. sweet!
we were really hungry so we backtracked to a little bakery that we saw on our walk to the hotel. we selected about 3 items each... i can't remember who chose this sandwich. it was a bit unusual (i wasn't sure what was in it) but it was greasily delicious.
after breakfast on the road, we started our walk toward tiananmen square and the forbidden city. beijing was not what i expected. i wasn't expecting such grand buildings, expansive spaces, and beautiful landscaping. while i did not fall in love with shanghai, no not in the least, i knew that two nights in beijing would be far too short.
as we got closer and closer to the forbidden city, the crowds got bigger and bigger. to the point that we could barely move without being pushed and shoved. we looked across the street at tianenmen square and it was literally a zoo. i think there was a festival going on - we had arrived in beijing right after national day so it must have been some remnant celebration. anyway, we decided not to cross the huge street to step foot into tianenmen. instead, we turned towards the giant portrait of mao and headed toward the forbidden city.
i was super disoriented when we reached the ticketing area because i had no idea that the forbidden city was renamed the palace museum a few years ago. major major confusion ensued. vince just stood there and watched my head spin. later, i saw that the information about the name change was in my guide book. oopsie.
we entered the palace museum aka the forbidden city and it was HUGE. we didn't realize how huge until we kept walking and walking and walking and walking. it was like a maze, which it was actually intended to be - there's a part that repeats and many different paths in order to confuse enemies. there were a ton of nooks and crannies - it would literally take over a week to explore them all. we had a few hours. the ground was uneven in places and i was surprised to see a tourist wearing sky high heels limping around. seriously?! even though all the buildings started to look the same after a while, the place was photographer heaven.
it was so exhausting and we still had so much more forbidden city to see. we were thirsty and tired so we stopped for two popsicle breaks. the best popsicle was the one with the cow on it. milk flavoured... mmmm!
after our little breaks, we had a lot more energy!
after hours and hours of walking around, we finally emerged at the end of the city. i had initially thought we would walk up to the little building at the top of the mountain but it was so far away. instead, we exited the city, turned, and started the long trek home.
what do you suppose this sign means?
oh how i love these little vehicles!
i was very silly and didn't bring a map but we happened to turn at the right spot and came across one of beijing's famous night markets. this one was the donghuamen night market. we didn't buy anything at this time but took a few photos and went back to the hotel to change because it was getting mighty chilly.
then we came back out and ATE! we were dead set on trying some form of insect. i thought we would have a few crickets but i underestimated how enormous they were... so instead, we had little scorpions, lamb kabobs, noodles, stinky tofu (vince wouldn't try it nor would he stand near me as i gobbled it all up), meat sandwiches, and little steamed sweets. can't say the food was marvellous - but the noodles and tofu were quite good and were my favourites.
later, we visited the wangfujing night market and saw more of the same thing. these were fixed rather than portable stalls. one difference was the live scorpions... talk about fresh!