Bringing Gracie Home

Day 3 Beijing

We had a day in Beijing to get used to the time change before heading to Gracie's province. We set up a tour online before we left home and it worked out great. They picked us up at our hotel and we started at Tiananmen Square. It is the largest city square in the world, with a lot of history.

This is one of the old gates to the old city wall of Beijing. Very pretty.

It was a beautiful sunny day, but very cold. People kept trying to get Tom to buy a ski cap, but he didn't want to.

Here we saw the towering Monument to the People's Heroes at the center of the square. Behind it is is the Great Hall of the People which was built in 1959 and is so called because the National People's Congress is held in this hall.

This is where they have the changing of the guard

and a large Chinese flad flying.

Here we are with the entrance to the Forbidden City

in the background.

The Forbidden City was very interesting.

The Forbidden city of China is located right in the heart of Beijing and was the home of 24 emperors of the Qing and Ming Dynasties. The grand palace’s construction was started during the Ming Dynasty in 1406, ending 14 years later in 1420. During ancient times, the emperor was claimed as the son of heaven, therefore having supreme power. Their home on Earth was a replica, built to resemble the Purple Palace in heaven where God lived. A place so divine as this was certainly forbidden to ordinary people, which is where the Forbidden City got its name. Its splendid architecture is a representation of the culmination and essence of the traditional architectural accomplishment of the Chinese.

Here we are inside the Forbidden City, but it goes on and on through many different gates. There are said to be 9,999 rooms in the palace.

Here we went through another fancy gate.