You Pick It, You Die

Today we took our tour of Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City and the Tower to Heaven. All through our tour, our guide was talking to us about the sacred nature of everything. Then we came across these pomegranate trees. I said, I bet we can't pick those. He said "You pick, you die". Literally. You would be executed. How crazy is that! We loved our tour, and we love our guide. Oliver Lin...what a great guy and an even better tour guide.


The Forbidden City is amazing. The architecture is unbelievable. Lin told us a lot about the history of the buildings, the emperors, and everything else that goes along with it. It's one big courtyard after another with the Emperor's palace right in the middle. All the different courtyards act as protection and there's even a mote that goes all the way around the square.

Considering all the stairs, the area was pretty well wheelchair accessible. Lin told us they had done all of that for the Paralympics. Patricia even got to ride a stair climber! It was pretty cool! :)

Just as you are leaving, there is a garden for the Emperor. It's full of rocks they took from the bottom of a lake, and then they pieced all the rocks together with sticky rice...yes, sticky rice!

Here's a picture of the rocks that are all pieced together. But I also had to put this on here because we thought this little boy was the cutest little thing ever.

After we exited the Forbidden City, we had lunch at a "local restaurant". Can I just tell you how scared I was. I don't consider myself to be a super picky eater, but I just didn't want anything too exotic. Lin took us to the Wahaha Restaurant. It was huge (4 stories) and absolutely beautiful. He ordered food for us, made sure we were settled and then took off. The first thing they brought us was actually really good, some kind of yummy orange chicken (even better than Panda Express!) :) the next two...not so much (some sort of soup and then eggplant) and then the rest was fabulous. There was a plate of cabbage with some sort of vinegar flavor, and then shredded pork and carrots in a soy sauce. I was one happy girl. For once since being here, I was full and it wasn't because of McDonald's! I even ate the whole dinner with chopsticks!

Here is Patricia with our spread. From left to right, going clockwise: watermelon for dessert, the cabbage, the yummy orange chicken (see there's not much left!), the eggplant (a lot left), the pork and then the soup. It was great!

After lunch we went to a huge park with the Tower to Heaven in the middle of it. This is a place where the Emperor comes twice a year for sacrifices and to pray for the crops in the spring and then again during the winter solstice. The park itself was beautiful, full of cypress trees. And then the Tower to Heaven was amazing. It's a big round building and Lin told us it was built without using one nail. So cool.

After seeing the Temple of Heaven, Lin took us to a silk factory. It was crazy to see how a little moth can make silk and then what they do with it. They stretch it to make clothes and quilts. Patricia was really impressed and got a silk quilt, a silk quilt cover and pillowcases...all for only $400! She can't wait to go home and put in on her bed.



We came back to the hotel, I got to take a quick nap before we took a taxi down to the US Embassy where we were meeting the team for a dinner with the Marines. They were BBQing for us...YUM! Two good meals in one day! They had chicken and ribs, with baked beans and potato salad. It was so nice to be around people that all spoke English and eat American food. They even had a foosball table, and of course I lost to Eric twice, but I did beat him once!