seekingmygreaterperhaps

On my last day of sightseeing in Beijing, my group headed to the Forbidden City, now more popularly known as the Old Palace. I have been so excited to see this and Tianamen Square since I learned of this program to Beijing, and we finally got to go!

It was a hot day, and the square was filled with people. Even though we went on a weekday, there are still plenty of people in China to attend this hot tourist attraction. There is never a shortage of people. Correction, there is never a shortage of people who will not stop staring at us. Regardless, we made the most of it, I got sunburned and had a jolly time.

Tianamen Square- where in the 80s, a group of students from Beijing Normal University, and lots and lots of others gathered to protest. The Chinese government said, nah, and famous footage of tanks lined up against the weaponless protestors made national headlines. (I Wikipedia’d before I came so I would understand some of the significance a tiny bit more.)

The entrance gates to the Forbidden City, featuring Mao’s head that you can see from a long distance away. Try as I may, there are no pictures making it look like I’m the only one in the Old Palace. There were too many people there. But that is part of traveling in China and I’m starting to embrace it. Slowly, because you know everyone wants to have good pics.

Notice the BLUE SKY. This doesn’t happen really in Beijing… ever. The air pollution is bad, like really bad, so blue skies are a rarity. Notice the front facing backpack- ultimate sign of a traveler/ tourist.

Our group did not have much time in the Forbidden City, which I’ve heard you can spend all day in, so we opted for the 1 1/2 path of walking straight through. I will mention that you need to show your passport to get a ticket into this site. Our guide Frannie, bless her, was like “Okay, give me your passports” in the middle of a crowded area with people staring at us, quite far away from the ticket office. All of us students were like, are you going to just carry our passports by hand over there? We asked her to put it in her backpack and were all freaking out a little bit. She did not understand why we were hyper-concerned with our passports as we all walked over to the ticket counter and watched her handle our tickets back to America the free. I’m glad it wasn’t just me that was hesistant, but clearly no one wanted to be stuck in China with no passport. We got them back, and Brandy acted like it was a drug deal handing them back, which no one questioned. Passport safety is a priority.

Back to the Old Palace… it was beautiful! Big! Grandiose! Crowded! After seeing the Summer Palace, I thought the Old Palace would lead up to something grand. Not that it wasn’t all grand, but all of the buildings start to look the same when you walk down the middle. Jenna just told me that there are gardens and beauty off to the sides… but we never ventured there.

Squatting because… China.

This is the emperor’s walkway. It’s sectioned off because in all of China’s history, only the emperor was ever allowed to walk on this part. It’s very intricate and I of course love the dragons. It leads up to all of the main buildings, so the emperor could get places in style. After walking only a tiny bit of the palace, I understood the need for servants as an emperor. It would be a long way to get your own tea, and with authority, I would love to be lazy and have someone bring it for me.

My new dragon friend. So this is going to sound bad, but most of us were #overit by this point. The buildings were looking the same, Asians were taking pictures of us (I started passive aggressively taking pictures of them whenever I caught them… no one got the hint. In fact, it encouraged them to come up and take a selfie with me.) and it was hot and sticky. And we were hungry. I will admit I was hangry, which is a fun place for no one. But we soon exited the Forbidden City, the imperial gardens were at the end, which are beautiful, but I did not care anymore. I need some food. We got lunch and all was well.

We ended up at a mall food court, and I tried to order things by myself. What I pointed to ended up being a cold noodle salad. Not my fav, but it had good flavor. At this point the group split up and the majority of us went to enjoy another aspect of Chinese culture: massage.

After tromping through Beijing, we decided to get a foot massage, it ended up being equivalent to about $20 USD for a 70 minute massage, which felt like heaven. They gave us tea, we sat in comfy chairs, and someone rubbed my smelly feet.

This is Melissa in the pre-massage soak. I felt weird taking pictures while it was actually happening and would much rather enjoy it. We were lucky to have Frannie with us, so she was able to translate the options, which were entirely in Chinese. It’s really nice to be with a local guide. I’m starting to get nervous to go out on my own, but I know it’ll be fine.

Massages and Palaces- it’s like the dream come true in China.