Adventures in Asia: Beijing, China

We flew back from DPRK to Beijing on May 24, this time to actually visit the city and not just pass through the airport.

We reached Qianmen subway station early in the afternoon, and walked through hutongs to reach our hostel, the Leo Courtyard.

After checking in, we ate a great lunch at a local restaurant.

Then we walked to Tiananmen Square.

We sort of meandered our way across the square to the Tiananmen Gate, from whence the square gets its name.

The gate is the entrance to the Imperial City, in which lies the Forbidden City.  There is quite a distance between the Tiananmen Gate and the Meridian Gate, which is the Forbidden City's entrance proper.

We walked through the Tiananmen Gate and to the Meridian Gate, but there headed east along the Forbidden City's moat.

There is an entrance fee to enter the Forbidden City (more commonly known as the Palace Museum in Beijing), and I was losing enthusiasm for visiting it as we walked.  Instead we walked between the wall and the moat to the East Glorious Gate.  

There we continued heading east, away from the Forbidden City.  We bought some cherries to munch on and eventually made our way back through Tiananmen Square to our hostel.

We went out again for dinner, and walked through the hutongs as the sun was setting.  The hutongs in our neighborhood were one of my favourite things about Beijing.  They are small alleys, often barely wide enough for a small car to pass through.