China: Forbidden City and Tienanmen Square

Our very first day in China started bright and early with our flight landing in Beijing around 6:30 in the morning. We were both pretty tired after our red eye flight, but somehow managed to find our way to our hotel, The Red Lantern House. Our hotel was great. I forgot to take pictures, but it's beautiful inside and I had the best shower I've had in a year there. It's easy to get to, just take line 4 of the subway and get off at Ping An'li station, walk north for about 500 meters and turn left onto ZengJue Houtong (There's a Diary Queen on the corner). I would totally recommend this hostel to anyone. The staff were really nice, and it was in a good part of the city.

After checking in and a meltingly lovely shower we headed out to The Forbidden Palace. It's also very easy to get to. It's right next to Tienanmen Square, for which there are 2 stops on Line 1 of the subway. We went on a weekday, but the crowds were still large. It was mostly full of Chinese tourists while we were there. Both of us were impressed by how big the palace grounds were. It just never seemed to end. There was no way we could see everything so we kind of just wandered around to anything that caught our eye and eventually made our way to the exit, which is really far from the entrance and Tienanmen Square. We ended up walking most of the way back and it took quite a while.

 We were told that there was a great Peking Duck place across from the East side of Tienamen Square, and to look for the  big duck statue. Tienanmen Square is HUGE. It's so big. We were lucky though and the duck statue gave it away. It was expensive for a whole duck, and they don't do half a duck, and I wasn't going to eat the duck, so Hal ended up ordering the Sauteed Duck with Seasonal Vegetables, and he freaking loved it. He didn't stop talking about it for the rest of the trip, so if you want some Peking duck, go there.

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