The Forbidden City, built in 1406 to 1420, the complex consists of 980 buildings. The Chinese imperial palace from the Ming Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty. It is located in the middle of Beijing, China, and now houses the Palace Museum. For almost 500 years, it served as the home of emperors and their households, as well as the ceremonial and political center of the Chinese government. The Forbidden City was my favorite tourist spot in Beijing. The architecture, statues, and colors used on the buildings are stunning!
Me in front of the entrance to The Forbidden City, north of Tianmen Square!
I love taking pictures of flowers! I was proud of myself on capturing these flowers in a beautiful moment!
My second trip to the Great Wall, Mutianyu section, was just as great as the first! I still had to stop and think, "wow, I'm really at the Great Wall of China!" Construction on the wall began in the 7th century BC and was built on and off again over the years. Actual wall consists of 3,889.5 miles, natural barriers 1,387.2 miles, and trenches 223.5 miles.
Where am I?
Black Market street as I heard it called, is home to some crazy things Chinese people eat and lots of Chinese people! My first sighting were these seahorses, starfish, and LIVE scorpions on sticks! We were frequently asked while taking pictures if we would like to try one! Ugh!!!
Ok, here's the full story! (Only read if you want to, it's more for my own keeping) Our flight from Beijing to LA was supposed to get in at 6pm, yet after going through customs and getting our bags, it was 7:20pm. I know it didn't take us that long to do those things, so the flight had to have been late. We rushed our bags to the drop off point but they told us that since our flight was late and our connection was too soon we'd need to take our bags with us to the gate. So we ran, out of the international terminal, caught an airport shuttle to another terminal, and ran to get our boarding passes. Yet, when we arrived at the ticket counter, the lady at the service counter was already giving us a hard time because we were checking in late. We tried to tell her it wasn't our fault, and that's when she told us to not get attitudes with her. Really! Not accomodating at all! Finally, she understood we weren't causing trouble, we just needed our boarding passes, check our luggage in and we'd be off! After that she was much nicer! However, Jae realized her luggage had lost it's tag to check it on through to SLC. Jae then had to go back to the check in counter while Ashley and I took off for security in hopes of catching our flight that was already boarding.
The people at security were really accomodating and let us cut in line to get through security faster, which we did and then we took off running! However, Ashley realized we needed to catch a shuttle bus to our gate and took off running. I watched her and the turn she took so I'd know which one to take. When I got to that point, I noticed the sign and recognized it was the turn I should take, yet as I came down that escalator I didn't see the sign straight ahead and I headed down the next escalator. I called her as I was trying to find my way (I wished she had just waited for me or had waited at the shuttle bus entrance and caught me before I went too far), but nevertheless, she didn't correct my wrong until I had somehow taken another escalator which took me right back to where Jae was standing talking to the ridiculous front desk lady! Are you kidding me? Ugh! So I went up to Jae and she couldn't understand what I was doing there, but after I told her I had taken a wrong turn and Ashley had left me, she was frustrated even more. It turns out, the lady was able to get Jae a boarding pass, yet there were no other planes leaving out of LA to SLC that night. We'd have to sleep over in the airport! The first flight out was at 6:30am and we could do standby for free or pay $75 for a guaranteed spot on the flight. At that point, we were both almost in tears. Here we had just been in China for 12 days, unknown language and culture, survived a 12 hour plane ride to LA to find we have to sleep in the airport and not the comfort of our own beds! Ugh, we wanted to cry!
So we both booked tickets for the next morning, crappiest $75 I've ever spent, but atleast I was headed home! We went looking for food and only found McDonalds, which would do! It wasn't Chinese food and that's all we cared about! After eating, we found a descent place to curl up. I probably only slept a few hours and of those 2, it wasn't good sleep. Finally 3:30am came around and we found our way to the American Airlines check-in kiosks. It was mayham! I swear everyone was going to Costa Rica and each person at a kiosk had about 20 passports he was checking in with. So we finally found an open one, checked Jae's one bag in and took it up to be weighed. And this is where we found out it was overweight. At this point, we could only laugh! After we got her bag all figured out, we got through security and eventually found the correct turns to the shuttle bus and finally...out gate! We finally made it home to SLC, home...sweet...home!
