Tian An Men Square & the Forbidden City

We got up at 3:00 to go to the airport. After we got finished at the airport we stopped at a restaurant for lunch. It was traditional Chinese food. Danny fell asleep in the car on the way there and was so crabby when he woke up. He has never been that crabby before. He refused to eat the food and kept telling us how much he hated China and wanted to go home. He wanted American food and cried and had a very long temper tantrum the whole time we were eating. Some of the looks I got were of shock and disapproval. Here we are in a foreign country where most people don't speak English and he was carrying on like that. I was so embarrassed! After lunch we went to Tian An Men Square and the Forbidden City. It was freezing cold. I think after Kuwait, and the heat here our blood thinned out. We walked about 3 km. After looking at a few buildings, they all started to look the same. The Square was a big open area with a few buildings, a bell and drum tower (middle left) and a monument in the center. The Forbidden city was built in 1406 and took 14 years to complete. There were lots of hand painted wood work near all of the roofs. There are 980 buildings and over 8700 rooms. For safety, the emperor never slept in the same room twice. His mistresses and concubines visited him in whatever room he was in and then were escorted back to their quarters when he was done. The lower right photo is the entrance to the Forbidden City. Once you got in there were lots of additional buildings you passed through to get to the emperors throne room (middle right side). There was also a moat that went around the palace with beautifully hand-carved bridge.

The photo of Danny in the upper right is him in the bathroom trying to get warm using the hand dryer. He was so cold and so cranky. Since he refused to eat we promised him that after we were done we would find a McDonalds and get him some nuggets. A lot of the time he refused to walk so Justin and I had to carry him. Finally when we got through all of the buildings our guide took us to a tree that was near the gift shop and the tree looked like two hearts knit together. It is hard to tell from our photo. The story is that one of the emperors married for love and it symbolized the union between him and his wife. After the tree our guide took us through what looked like a secret entrance which was an upscale gift shop that had jade work and paintings for sale and original ceramics on display. The nephew of the last emperor was also there and he studied ancient Chinese writing and Justin asked him to write out for us "Eternity" and our name on it. A memory we will treasure.