Beijing, 21 May. Forbidden City

Lodging at the Jade Palace Hotel, 76 Zhichun Road (in North Beijing), Haidian District, Beijing 100086

The famous "see through" bathroom. Glass walls on both sides of the shower.
 Conveniently, there were shades you could pull from inside the shower.  

 Hotel breakfast buffet.  As became typical through our trip, the big hotels like this Jade Palace offered a nearly astounding variety of mostly unusual foods to western tastes.  Congee (rice porridge),  Cooked vegetables of many varieties.  A variety of usually mediocre breads and pastries, sometimes including waffles or pancakes.  You could usually get a single fried egg if you could find the person cooking them.  They cooked them one at a time, in a small skillet, while you wait.  Often there was a meat similar to bacon.  Occasionally potatoes, in addition to the ever present rice.

Took our bus to the interior city - the Forbidden City.
As advertised, it is immense, even monumental.   To no great surprise, there were many guards standing at strict attention throughout the area.
There was much museum quality material in the various Imperial City buildings, but they were universally poorly displayed.  Poor lighting, often behind dirty glass windows.  A disappointment - and it helps understand their priorities and budget policies.  In general, I found little accommodation for other languages in Chinese facilities anywhere.  It was rare to find an english interpretation of a sign.  It was not uncommon that there would be no sign at all, in any language.

The Tour Group at the Forbidden City

We got a laugh at some of the signs posted around various tourist sites, like these:

Cellphone use?

It's somehow fascinating that they suggest
the hand railings are as important as the relics.

There was a huge, beautiful, granite National Museum of China across the thoroughfare from Tianamen, which we did not get to visit.  I wonder what it would have been like.

I purchased a group photo, taken in front of the Forbidden City, for 50 yuan (or about $8 or $9).

Traffic was chaotic, as it was everywhere we went.  An incredible variety of conveyances (cars, buses, trucks, bicycles, electric bicycles, motor scooters, and 3-wheeled motor bikes which become their pickup trucks).  And pedestrians.  And they all come together, from every direction, at every intersection, weaving together like schools of fish, dodging each other  in some insane magical way. We were warned time and again, in every city, that pedestrians are ignored  and you are on your own.  Don't trust any signal light, or driver.  The typical approach is that a car, on approaching a pedestrian,  lays on the horn about 50 feet away, and keeps coming.  They do not even pause for you.

Cars:  BMW's seemed commonplace.  Mercedes, Audis, VW's, Hyundais, Peugeots, Buicks and Chevys, plus many makes I couldn't recognize.

We took lunch in a park setting. Temperature uncomfortably warm, but not terrible.

SMOG was ever present.  A visual distraction that seemed to get worse asa the day went on.  A few group members used masks to assist them.  I did not, but I did find myself with a hacking cough from time to time.

Dinner was Imperial Peking Duck dinner.  Interesting, but not particularly unusual.  I think it would be similar to dinner in a good Chinese restaurant in Kansas City.