The Forbidden City is not so Forbidden

After a brilliant nights sleep, it was time to see the sights of Beijing but not before the ATMs had to be renegotiated so that we could take out money to pay for our tour of the Great Wall. It seems that the bank had decided that just as we wanted to pay, they would do some maintenence on their systems which meant that no transactions were able to be processed during a 3 hour window and of course that 3 hour window occurred when we were trying to pay. Embarrassed, Jamie ran off to draw some money out of the ATMs while I went and did the most important task of the morning - purchasing breakfast for the two of us at a local bakery.

Jamie returned flustered, as it appeared the ATMs didn't want to give us any money either, so had to explain to the lady that we would only be able to pay later when the bank maintainance was complete. I watched on, scoffing my face with breakfast as I was hungry.

We had attempted to be out of the hotel at 10am but due to our financial debacle of the morning taking longer than expected we ended up leaving the hotel closer to 11am. We decided to walk the three blocks to Tiannamen square from our hotel and passed countless rickshaws and cyclists braving the Beijing traffic. As we had three large intersections to cross, we quickly realised the rules of the pedestrian crossing which are there are no rules. Even if there is a green man, that doesn't mean cars stop for you and even if there is a red man it doesn't mean you can't walk. Basically, you walk anytime there is a space in traffic and hope like hell the cars will stop for you. The other striking observation was again the Smog and how our visibility was limited to about 500m. It really dampens your mood being in somewhere so grey and knowing that the quality of the air you are breathing in is equivalent to roughly smoking 18 cigarettes.

We knew we had hit Tiannamen Square as the volume of people multiplied by what seemed like millions. After walking through a security checkpoint, we were greeted with massive lines of tour groups trying to get it to Mao's Mausoleum, security guards and selfie sticks (God I hate those things). The other surprising observation was how much internal tourism there was in China, with Europeans being few and far in between. Because of this, we had wondered if we would bump into our friends Emily and Victoria from the train and literally about 30 minutes later they spotted Jamie and we laughed at how ironic it was finding each other in such a massive city.

We realised that we had the same itinerary planned for the rest of the day which included the Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven so we decided to hang out together to check out the sights. First stop was the Forbidden City, which was a selection of temples repeating themselves over and over again with a sea of never ending tourists. The shear number of people was enough to drive us out of the place, so after a quick look around we made our way out and walked towards to Temple of Heaven via our hotel to sort out the tour tickets for the following day.

After our quick stopover, we made our way to the Temple of Heaven via McDonald's where we stopped for an ice cream cone. Turns out the ice cream was actually frozen yoghurt and after craving ice cream all day, I ended up cursing McDonald's for providing me with the healthier option. After this incredible disappointment, we continued to the temple and had the option of an entry ticket or a through ticket which would allow all access to all temples within the complex. After the Forbidden City we were a bit templed out, so we opted for a walk around the grounds where we anticipated that we would at least get a view of the temples. The majority of the complex was just grass/gardens and the only buildings that were found required the through ticket or entrance was available at an inflated sum. Our tour consisted of a lot of brick walls, some roses and grass. As it was getting darker and closer to 6pm, we decided to catch the metro back to our hotel to enjoy two for one cocktails which unfortunately were incredibly disappointing bit as they were supplemented by free left over afternoon tea, it almost made up for it.

A few cocktails later and it was time to hit the local food market for a bit of dinner. We passed the same wonderful delicacies from last night with the scorpions and cockroaches being in particularly high supply. We consumed corn on a cob which was very chewy, steamed vegetable dumplings which consisted of some vegetsble and some meat, the favourite being a potato fritter with an egg in the middle and dessert consisting of a hot waffle cone with a scoop pf icecream.

Our night ended with a brief walk down one of the expensive shopping streets which had light up stairs and some cute little pop up art things. We started making our way to the Tube station where Emily and Victoria would go the opposite direction to us and the second disaster of our holiday struck as I fell down the stairs and landed heavily on my left arm, scratching and brusing my arm and losing all the feeling in my little finger. Jamie said I was fine if I had broken my arm as long as it wasn't my ankle. Awww young love.Read more