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This morning we decided to give the buffet breakfast at the hostel a miss and instead went to the McDonald's round the corner (there are actually 4 McDonald's within a few minutes walk from the hostel - maybe even more!). The English menu card we were shown didn't have any breakfast items on so I just had a cofee, while Dave had a full meal with chips - it was a bit early for me to eat all that! We then took the subway to Tianamen Square and walked through to the Forbidden City, which was the Chinese imperial palace from the Ming dynasty to the end of the Qing dynasty.
We stopped to look at the information in our guide book and were joined by two familiar faces - Hamish and Kat who we'd met in Xi'an! They arrived in Beijing yesterday and somehow ended up bumping into us in this city of 15 million people - spooky! We briefly caught up with them while we bought our tickets and audioguides but lost them soon after - there were a LOT of people there and so much to see, it would have been impossible to stay together. Perhaps we'll bump into them again! The audioguides were different to the ones we've used in the past (and we've used a lot over this year!). Usually they are like a telephone where you type in the number corresponding to the place you're at and can pause, stop and replay sections. These had the map of the grounds printed on the box with red lights indicating all of the information points. It worked with a GPS system so that when you were in a certain area it would play the recorded info for that placea nd then the light would go out so that you could see where you still needed to go. The only problem was that once you'd heard the info you couldn't hear the same one again, and Dave's kept playing sections before we got there so he couldn't see what it was describing! It was very high-tech though and worked well for most of the time.
The stie is huge and we didnt get to every bit - it would have taken the entire day. A lot of the buildings have strange names such as 'The Hall of Supreme Harmony' and 'Palace of Heavenly Purity'. We worked out that to name one of these buildings you just need a superlative followed by an abstract noun (ok, Dave worked it out)... I came up with 'Hall of Awesome Gorgeousness' - I think I'll suggest it! One highlight of the day was seeing the Hall of Clocks and Watches which displays hundreds of clocks, many made in England, which were presented to the emporers. There were many weird and wonderful contraptions, including one with an automaton (like in the film 'Hugo') which writes 6 Chinese symbols on a bit of paper each time it goes off - very clever stuff!
By mid-afternoon we were exhausted so we made our way back to the hostel. That night we got the subway to 'Ghost Street' again and this time ate at a place called 'Grandma's Kitchen' that we spotted the other day and whcih has a good write-up in the Lonely Planet. From the front entrance it looks like a tiny, run-down place, but when we got inside we found it extends back into a large courtyard with guest rooms and private dining rooms around the edges. It was quite busy but we were given a table outside in the courtyard - luckily there was no rain tonight! We enjoyed a lovely meal of comfort food and treated ourselves to steak (well, we only have a few days left!). It's famous for it's food which is supposed to remind you of home cooking 'just like Grandma's'. It certainly was good food and just what we wanted. We headed back to the hostel early as we're planning a very early start tomorrow to go and see the Great Wall!
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