Back to Day 3

As I mentioned, Day 3 was a long day that included a trip to the Forbidden City and a Hutong Tour.   Hutong is "old" Beijing, and only 12% of the original area still exists.  It was very interesting.  
The Forbidden City is much like the Great Wall.  We have all seen the place in photos, movies and on TV.   But words cannot describe what it was like to see this place in person.   The place was massive in size and scale.   Touching a big fire water pot that was placed there 2000 years ago, very cool.  That pot is 10 times older than the United States.  

It was pretty cold.   But here we are outside the front gate.  Our tour guide took us through the whole complex and kind of off the beatin path, so we avoided a lot of tourists.  It was nice to have parts of the place to ourselves.  We even went to one part where you have to have permission to go to and we met the nephew of the last emperor.  That was kind of cool.

Here we are outside of the Forbidden City.  Even being outside the walls is impressive

This was a house that a woman opened up to people in the Hutong.  Interesting history.  This was a General's house 100 years ago, and the house is 200 years old.  I was more like a mini compound of 5 houses (buildings) Each building was only about 400 square feet.  Currently there is 7 people living there, but at one time there were 12 families living there and a total of 58 people. 

This was our mode of transportation in the Hutong.  In a rickshaw!  It was a lot of fun.