March 14, 2015 For our final day in Beijing, we went to visit the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. We thought that we were being smart by waiting until a weekday to visit, but we were completely wrong! The government started their annual session on Tuesday, so the security was crazy. We had to stand in line for about 30 minutes just to get to the outskirts of Tiananmen Square where we discovered that the actual Square was closed and the military were doing some exercises in there. After that, we had to wait in another giant line to get to the Forbidden City (normally it’s just a matter of going through an underpass). Half way through the line we realized we were in the “no bag” line, but I had my purse. Of course it wasn’t written in English so we had no idea. Luckily, they took pity on us (probably because of the blank look on our faces and the fact that we were obviously tourists) and let us through anyway. The funniest part was that we had told Hayden to follow what the person in front of him did and to do the same thing…they had to put their arms up and go through to be wanded. When Hayden came through with his arms up, the security guard thought it was pretty funny and started laughing and just waved us all through. Inside of the city was pretty cool. We were a little disappointed because we thought that the Summer Palace and some of the other places we had already seen were impressive. We had saved the Forbidden City partly because we thought it would be one of the really neat places, so I guess we just had our expectations a little high.

Forbidden City

Tiananmen Square

Forbidden City

After that, we walked around for a while before heading back to the hotel to pack and get ready for our train to Xi’an the next day. We got to the train station to leave for Xi’an at about 5:00 pm, but our train didn’t leave until 8:00 pm…lots of extra time, but better safe than sorry. We had a soft sleeper car that we thought should be pretty comfortable…it wasn’t. Hayden and I managed to sleep, but Adam was up about all night with the bumps and rattling around. It’s a little weird because you reserve the room by bed, not by room, so since there are only 3 of us, we ended up with a stranger in the room with us. She seemed nice enough (she didn’t speak any English, so we couldn’t really communicate), but she got off in the middle of the night, so we had the room to ourselves after that.

Sleeper Train

In Xi’an, we have done several things around the city. We went to the Steele Museum which was very cool. They had the original 13 books that were written by Chinese scholars (including Confucius) all written out on huge tablets…it was very impressive.

Stele Museum

“books”

We did a dinner show that was neat, but totally over-priced. The reviews were very good on Trip Advisor, but we were totally scammed by the tour agency in the hotel, so we were not happy with it. Long story short, they sold us the “Dumpling Dinner and Show” but when we got our tickets from the driver when we arrived, they were just for the show, not the dinner. I would like to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that it was a language barrier issue, but we’re about 90% sure it was a total scam because of the way they back-tracked when we showed them the tickets and told them what happened. Luckily, the maître de took pity on us (obviously seeing what had happened) and let us go to the dinner anyway.

Tang Dynasty Show

Tang Dynasty Show

Tang Dynasty Show

We also went to the Muslim Quarter and the Great Mosque. Holy cow, do they have some great street food down there! It is crazy cheap and SO GOOD! We’ve eaten some of the best meat skewers, roasted potatoes, beef sandwiches, and this honey peanut brittle that is amazing. The best part is that with the exchange rate, we spend about $6.00 for all of us to eat a full meal!

Street Food!

Food Inspections? Nope

Muslim Quarter

Next up is the Terracotta Warriors and visiting the City Wall. Hayden is PUMPED for the warriors…they are half the reason he wanted to come to China in the first place.