4am now seems to be the preferred wake up time, which leaves us with a lot of time to kill. I'm pretty organized with the bottles so they're all prepared the night before (just like blue Peter:"here's one I prepared earlier") he knows when his bottle is being made when he sees me shaking the living daylights out of the mixing bottle (water jug).
Once he's changed and fed we roll around on the floor of the hotel room playing with his toys. For what seems like an eternity. I've taken to laying out the quilt from my bed to make it more comfortable (for me). The pillows, however, stay on the bed otherwise I'd be out like a light.
6:30 arrives and of to the cafe we go.
Mike came over and asked if we wanted to go to the Forbidden City. You betcha.
We took a cab and had explained to the desk where we wanted to go and to the bell boy as well. Mike also had a card from the hotel with all the tourist destinations preprinted on it. The bell boy told him we wanted to go to the Forbidden City and mike pointed it out on the card.
When we got out of the taxi we were surprised to see how many people were at Tiananmen Square we were not only surprised to see so many people but also surprised at the obvious lack of city, forbidden or otherwise.
Unperturbed we crossed the street, proceeded through the security check point and into the square itself. As I had expected, it is a very large, flat piece of concrete. We walked to the opposite end from where we had been dropped and ventured into the subway to get across the 14 lane road (same one as previously mentioned).
It was in this subway that I saw the only person begging on the whole trip. No need for details.
We made our way through some gardens (50 cents to get in) towards where we thought The Forbidden City might be.
We got to the entrance of a building that was labeled "museum" Yes there were large walls etc but it didn't look like it does in the movies. So we passed on that and decided to keep on walking. It turned out that we chose to walk around the forbidden city. Oh well.
We walked and walked and ended back at the 14 lane street. We headed back to the hotel on foot and it was quite a trek. The kids had been pretty good for their hot and tired dads and wanted to be carried and then would let us put them back for a while in the strollers.
When we got close to home we headed for the nearest mall with a Dairy Queen.
And so endeth the 2nd of September
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