Beijing, Day One

Today was such a great day! We both slept very well last night! We woke up at 6:00 am to FaceTime the kids back home. It was great to see them and chat for a bit! Then we got ready and headed up to the breakfast buffet. Yum! Our guide met us downstairs, and we were off for our first sightseeing adventure!
We started by walking past the Great Hall of the People. It's equivalent to our Capitol Building.

 Then we went to Tianenmen Square. I have seen pictures Tianenmen Square recently and the smog was so dense you could hardly see in front of you. Luckily that wasn't the case today! It was a gorgeous day! Hardly smoggy at all, and just beautiful out! It started out sunny and cold, but by the time we were 45 minutes into the tour, it was sunny and very warm! Couldn't have asked for more perfect March weather!

I loved these big screens! They are a new addition to the square.

 

The bulk of our day was spent touring the Forbidden City. This massive city was built from 1406-1420 by the Ming Dynasty and was used as an imperial palace for nearly 500 years by the Ming and Qing Dynasties. There are 980 buildings and it covers 7,800,000 square feet!! It's SO massive! We had a really great time and learned some fascinating things!

An extremely large painting of Chairman Mao on the first gate into the Forbidden City.

If a man touches a knob on this crazy big door, it means good luck in getting wealth. If a woman touches it, it means good luck in getting pregnant. Needless to say, I steered clear of the door while Quin touched it ;)

Inside the first gate. There are three total.

A close up of one of the buildings. They are SO ornate!!

One of the ceilings. So beautiful!

Apparently they paint these every year to keep them looking nice!

These women were taking a tour. I asked our guide why they were dressed that way and she said it's part of their traditional clothing. So fancy!

Finally inside the third gate. This is the actual palace!

 

The throne. You can't go inside the building anymore and this picture doesn't nearly do it justice! It was gorgeous!

A look back over one of the squares. There are three of these. SO BIG!!!

A pretty view from the top of the palace. The pagoda in the distance is part of a garden/park on a man made mountain. The mountain was made from the dirt they moved digging a mote that goes around the perimeter of the Forbidden City!!

As we were taking this picture, a guy asked if he could get one with us. What the!?

I thought it was hilarious and asked our guide to take one as well!

One of the many gold lion statues. Although tigers are native to China and lions are not, lions are the animal used to represent the emperors, because tigers are monogamous and lions are polygamist. The emperors had many concubines, and, therefore, couldn't be represented by a tiger.

Another throne

A statue outside the dragon lady's quarters. The dragon lady was the mother to one of the emperors. She was power hungry and was said to rule the throne from behind the curtain. She used dragons in front of her quarters, even though the symbol of the dragon is only used for males.

A piano the last emperor learned to play! I had to post this for my dad :)

A closer up picture of the pagoda from outside the Forbidden City

After our tour was over, we went to an authentic Chinese restaurant for lunch. Luckily our guide helped us order! We had Kung Pao chicken, vegetables, meatballs, and fried rice. It was all very tasty, especially the fried rice! Mmmmm!

We headed back to the hotel after lunch to pick up our donations for Little Flower. Little Flower was about an hour away, and it was fun to really see a lot of Beijing! We toured Little Flower for an hour and had such an amazing time! We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but it's a really, truly amazing place! They saved Milo's life, and I couldn't be more grateful for the care they give abandoned children there! They not only take in orphans who need medical care, but they also offer funding to families who decide to parent their bio kids with special needs to help them get surgeries the families couldn't otherwise afford! They're also trying hard to spread a public message that you don't have to abandon your child just because he/she has special or medical needs. There is so much hope and help available! What an amazing, needed, valid message! I could talk for hours about Little Flower! I want to move in! Seriously, rooms full of the most darling, beautiful, perfect babies and toddlers!! I could have stayed forever! I am SO thankful to have visited such a piece of Milo's history! I am also thankful we learned how to correctly pronounce his name. We've been saying it wrong all this time!

Here we are outside Little Flower!!

One of the best parts of the day was going into a room with several computers and having nannies pull up different pictures of Milo on all their computers! It was so, so amazing! They downloaded them all onto a memory card we brought. What a remarkable, priceless treasure!! I will post some pictures of him tomorrow!

We got back to the hotel around 5:00. With the intention to walk somewhere for dinner, we somehow found ourselves in the Executive Lounge again just to check it out. There was a completely different spread than last night, so we decided to take the free meal again. So yummy!! My favorite tonight were mini quiche!

We took a walk around the streets of Beijing tonight. I'll admit that when crossing the street, I may have screamed in fear a few times! Pedestrians have NO right of way! Even when the light turns green and tells you to cross the street, there are still cars coming from every direction honking at you! Speaking of honking, we've observed that honking happens all. the. time. It's not used for the same purpose it is at home, either. It's a friendly little, "I'm in this lane so don't hit me!" or a, "Get out of the way, I'm merging!", or an, "I'm changing lanes, watch out!" warning, or a "I don't care if you're walking across the road, move or you're dead!" warning. It took a while to get used to, but now all I can do is laugh! Even now, clear up on the 22nd floor of our hotel room with double paned glass windows, I can still hear honking every second!

We're having such an amazing time in Beijing! We are so thankful for the chance we have to be here and to soak in lots of Chinese culture! Tomorrow we head to the Great Wall! Plus, we're one day closer to getting Milo!! 3.5 days!! EEEKKK!!