The forbidden city
Remark: I posted this note on Facebook before because I could not access wordpress from behind the Great Firewall (eg China).
After a nice and comfortable flight from London to Beijing we finally started our trip. At least feelingwise the trip didn’t start before our touch down at the brand new modern and cool Terminal 4 at Beijing Intl. Airport. We arrived there at 7am so we had a whole day to “waste”. We reduced our cost to reach the city by not believing the first taxi driver who offered to take us to the centre (which is probably coincidentally located just in front of his friend’s art gallery). A nice shuttle bus ride later we stood right in front of our hostel and therewith next to the infamous forbidden city.
The most obvious option for us was to leave the luggage and go straight into the mysterious place which turned out to be not as mystical as we expected it to be. The thousands of tourists visiting the forbidden city at the same time as us might have had an influence on our impressions but mainly as Europeans we are just used to other ways of conserving a people’s history. We are not used to 1cm of dust on top of silk armor and hundreds of years old weapons. We are not used to paly (blasse) colours on buildings. Nevertheless it was a very nice first real day of our journey. We got to see very impressive ancient buildings with an interior that is entirely different from what you would see at any European castle. Everything is so much more simple. Signing off now waiting a few more minutes for James and Sophie to take us for dinner 
