The Forbidden City & Houtong

When it comes to the Forbidden City, the pictures pretty much say it all. But there are a couple things I'll add.

When we were in Tiananmen Square, there were a bunch of darling little girls in pink that came up to me and Catherine and asked to take their pictures with us. So we obliged and I asked our tour guide to take pictures too - to document all these celebrity photos shoots we've been subject to. Ha!

panaramic of Tiananmen Square 

the cute girls (and one boy) who wanted a picture with us

Tthe Forbidden City - it is huge! We kept going into huge courtyard after huge courtyard. I thought it would never end. Most of the big temple looking parts of the city were rarely used! Only like once a year. It was kind of rainy that day, but the temperature was so much cooler and therefore nicer. Unfortunately, we couldn't go into any of the buildings. We had to stay outside. But there were a few buildings where the doors were open or there were windows to peer in, but it was such a mess to jam your way through bodies to even get a glimpse of what was inside. I had more success by raising my camera way up over my head and taking a picture of what was inside and then looking at the picture on my camera of what was inside.

Now I'll let the pictures do the talking. (But keep reading, cuz I have more after the pictures.)

this is the throne where the last Empress Cixi sat behind her 6-year-old Emperor son on the bed behind the curtain. He sat on the throne, she was on the bed with the curtain drawn. 

After the Forbidden City, we went on a rickshaw tour of the old neighborhoods of Beijing that are called houtong. We even stopped at one home to have lunch made by a native Beijing family and they talked about living in these old homes. Her grandfather bought the home over 100 years ago, but the government owns the land and will be tearing down the houtongs soon to build more modern buildings. The houtong homes don't have bathrooms! They only have community bathrooms every other block or so. The main hostess was a painter - she painted the inside of tiny little snuff bottles that the Chinese use to sniff smelly dried herbs and plants. Here are some  pics from that adventure:

our tour guide on the left is translating for our hostess who is sitting in the middle

our hostess showing us how she paints the snuff bottles

our rickshaw guides taking a nap during our lunch

And we also went to the Drum Tower where they performed this for us: