The Forbidden City

The first gate into the Forbidden City. Tiananmen Square is actually across the street from here.

Our next day was a big one, we headed to the Forbidden City. I am sure I can say this was the highlight of our trip! What an incredible place! First of all it is gigantic and second of all it is just beautiful! We were lucky to have Owen with us, who is a huge photography buff, so he took most of the pictures I have posted of the City. It is a must see for anyone visiting Beijing and I would suggest spending the entire day there. We were there for half a day and I think we could have spent a few more hours there. Some of the halls were converted into museums of ancient Chinese artifacts such as porcelain, compasses, teapots, etc. Some of the halls were empty while some were decorated with ornate gold everything. The Forbidden City is also under refurbishing for the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics, so on of the main areas were covered with scaffolding and green tarplin, so we weren't able to see that.



We asked this guard if Jeanette could have her picture with him and he yelled "No Photo!". We snuck one in anyway!



Posing with Mao!



The gates had these enormous red doors that obsessively photographed. (Actually Owen took this one!)



Jeanette at the main entrance to the City.

We are in the City!



Once again Jeanette had a fan club!



Here are more fantastic red doors! (Thanks Owen!)



Here are thethee colorful rafters in the City. I couldn't believe how beautiful they were.

Here are a ton of shots of the buildings within the city.

















And some lions...





A hallway within the city.





Inside one of the buildings. I am not sure what they did in this building as there wasn't any signs up. To me it kind of looks like where the emperor would have had his throne or a possible place of worship.

After our trip to the City Owen needed to go and pick up Xavier from school while the mother-to-be was ready for some good ole' Western style food. We headed to the Bookworm because we are friendly with the owner who just opened shop in Chengdu and we weren't disappointed. Now I could go on forever about what a great concept the Bookworm really is: bar, cafe and bookstore/library. We had a lovely lunch and decided after all of our walking we were in need of massages again. We headed over to Dragonfly and had an hour more of pampering before we called it a night.