The Forbidden City.....

I was a little leary of taking the girls into the City alone. Independent travel here can be scary. The language barrier is huge.
I did some investigating and to do the Forbidden City and a hutong tour with a driver and a guide would have been over $400.

So we decided to go for it. Robing arranged a driver, the same one who took us to the Great Wall, and we were on our way by 1015am. It was a 45 minute drive into the centre of Beijing. Pretty nice day again. The traffic seems a lot less life threatening
and the drivers not as wild. One near miss by a bus and that was it. I noticed the driver was even wearing his seat belt!

We were let off at the North gate of the City and walked through until we exited neat Mao big portrait in Tiananmen Square. The Square, of course, is the largest open air venue of it's kind in the world. The Forbidden City is massive. For two hours we wandered about and enjoyed it very much. Go here to read all about it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_City

We were told to meet our driver near Kentucky Fried Chicken on the south west corner of the square. Bit of a challenge and quite the walk. Once I had land marked it with the help of a friendly policeman and Beth's excellent Mandarin we knew we could find an authentic chinese restaurant and have a lovely lunch and still meet him at the pre set time.

We found just the thing and confidently walked in and sat down with all the locals. Had a great meal of chicken and chilies, tofu,shrimp and broccoli, fried noodles and rice. The girls ate like they hadn't eaten in a week. Again couldn't have done it without Beth's Mandarin. She is gaining confidence by the day and it is too funny to watch our driver direct all questions, as does pretty much any chinese, to Beth and hear her rattle back at them. Grace is trying some and reads the characters very well but Beth has a greater command of the spoke word. So, Derek we haven't been wasting our money all these years and they can carry on with their classes. Tell Ariel she has taught them well!!

After our excellent lunch I hit the ATM and we went grocery shopping for a few things we were running low on. I wanted to take the girls to s chinese supermarket and so I did. It was also huge as it most everything here and we had fun exploring and
making our choices. It was similar to where Isabel and I shopped last year in Xian. The girls found the candy bins and made some selections. Isabel used to enjoy that.

Then it was find our driver and head home. It was interesting that at 430pm there was not much traffic at all and as we came closer to Shunyi where we are housed, in the northeast part of Beijing, there are brand new 4 lane highways and there was NO
ONE on either side of the road for miles and miles..........very surreal.

So that was our most excellent day. Just now the kids are playing with the children and soon it will be bath time and bedtime for us all.