Forbidden City

We got up later than we wanted to but after breakfast and a grueling two hour game of UNO that just wouldn't end we finally managed to get to the Forbidon City. When we got there we were greeted with a rediculously large line-up for tickets and proceeded to wait in the blistering sun for about half an hour. I don't want to burst anyone's bubble but the Forbidon City is huge and has lots of buildings but other than that it is somewhat not very impressive, sorry. We started at the south entrance and walked our way up to the north side taking pictures of the various rooms and different thrones that the emperors used. We went into the porcelain display room where they had dozens of old jars and flower pots from hundreds of years ago.

We read about a display called the room of clocks and that they were supposed to go off at 2 o'clock so we walked and walked and tried to find out where excactly it was in time

We got there only to discover they only set off two or three clocks and there were too many people to really see what was going on; what we did get a glance at was kind of neat though.

After the clocks we went into the jewlery exhibit and thought we were going to see huge crowns full of jewels and diamonds, sadly no. It was cool to see the tiny intricate carvings in lots of the peices but all-in-all we set our hopes a little high again. Everything was pretty dusty and didn't look really well taken care of, although we do have to remember that this stuff is hundreds or even a couple thousand years old...it's bound to be bent up a little.

When we left we took pictures of the huge portrait of Mau that was hanging on the wall outside.
When we were in the hostel for supper we met a British guy, Steve, who gave us really good advice on the UK, a German guy, Mike, and a couple of American girls, who left the next day so we can't remember their names. We had some drinks with them but finally went to bed because we had to wake up early to go to the wall.