Today was another early start. I did sleep in until at least 7 today. Maybe by tomorrow I will sleep right through until the alarm that I set. Today was a day that I was really looking forward too; our first day of sightseeing. We went to breakfast and then boarded the bus for Tiananmen Square. It really is amazing to see the size of the largest square in the world. You stand at one end and you can see all the way to the other side. However, in order to get to the other side, it took a good 10 to 15 minutes of walking. The government buildings surrounding the square were massive. It was neat to see where one of the most powerful governments in the world operated. There was also a large amount of people waiting to get into the museum in the middle of the square. I have never seen so many people in one place at one time (or at least for something other than an amusement park like Disney). There was a decent size monument, which had a similar look to the Washington Monument, which was for unnamed soldiers who have died for China. After walking through the square, we arrived at the famous wall leading into the Forbidden City. On this was a very large picture of the former leader of China, Mao. There was a slight water show going on in the moat in front of the Forbidden City. Upon entering the Forbidden City, you could really see the amount of detail that was put into every building. There were dragons carved in at the end of every shingle on the roofs of the buildings. Each building was pretty massive in size too. What made it so amazing is that we were informed that these buildings were constructed without the use of nails and they were made entirely out of wood. Somewhere throughout the years, the technology was lost, so when they did renovations for the Olympics, they were having trouble.
After the Forbidden City, we went to a part of Beijing that reminded me of New York City. There were big department stores, malls and extremely expensive designer stores. It was at a mall that we had lunch. This was by far my favorite meal through the first couple of days. It was food from an ethnic group that lives in the southwestern part of China. After lunch, we took a break to go shopping. This is when we got our first taste of the Chinese markets. I must say, it is a little intimidating at first when a lot of people come up to you and try to sell you stuff while speaking a different language. It was also interesting to see scorpion, seahorse, starfish and spiders served to you on a stick. After the market, we went back to the hotel for a nap. After the nap, a bunch of the group went to Pizza Hut to have some good American food for dinner to give our stomachs a break.