Squeezed into a golf cart on the way to the Forbidden City.
Walking into the Forbidden City
The inner court, surrounded by 1,000 stone dragons which symbolize power and double as the drainage system.
These lions are all over the Forbidden City. They are at almost every entrance. The one on the right is the male lion with his paw on a sphere which symbolizes power. The one on the left (featured here) is the lioness with her paw on a cub which symbolizes fertility.
The large stone structure was between staircases. It has 9 dragons on clouds which symbolize power. In order to move the structure, they waited until winter and sprinkled water on the ground in order to drag this huge structure on ice through the city.
After spending the afternoon at the Forbidden City we had about 4 hours until our train departed. We went back to the hotel to grab our bags and arrange for another driver to take us to Olympic Park.
2008 Beijing Olympic Park
There were about 30 people cleaning the water cube about half were rappelling down the side. It is made out of material that they bounced off...weird.This marks the end of our 24 hour tour of Beijing. We had so much fun! The last stop was the train. Luckily, we made it on the 10 hour express train. However, we weren't able to arrange to stay in the same room. Our roommates were a cute little old Chinese couple. It made us realize that grandparents are the same everywhere you go. They were very excited to talk (in broken Chinese) to us and learn that we were teachers from America. Grandma said Jeremy's Chinese was very good, and she had to translate louder for Grandpa since he was hard of hearing. I helped her open the door in the middle of the night, and she told everyone the same story about 15 times. Sound familiar to anyone else? Love to the grandparents!
Train Roomies
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