Bundled up in Beijing

Guess who bundled up in their warmest clothes and toured all around Beijing. That’s right us! It is official, we are all tropical babies and were not prepared for the cold in Beijing. We bundled up though and headed out though since there was loads to see.

It was pretty cute watching these two in the cold. Poor Malcolm wouldn’t even take his hands out of from under my scarf to eat his lollipop. That’s when you know things are dire.

Our first stop was Tiananmen Square were the boys were a hit of course! Everyone wanted to take photos with the boys. Our tour guide told us that a lot of local Chinese tourists that have come from small town have never seen a ‘foreigner’ and to celebrate they take a lot of photos. Here is where that left Adam. I wonder if they’ll hang this one on their wall.

For Randy and me, visiting Tiananmen Square was definitely the highlight of our day. We have heard about and seen photos our whole life and it was pretty amazing to be somewhere with so much history. When we talked about the highlight of our day Randy and I both picked Tiananmen Square.

We came at a perfect time. Apparently Mao’s portrait is repainted every year because of pollution and weather and we arrived the week after they had finished, so we got a fresh Mao.

And here is what happened when I asked Adam to give Malcolm a hug in front of Mao.

Next it was into the side entrance to the Forbidden Palace. The middle gate was used only for emperors and is now used only by the President…so we went through with the masses on the right.

Inside it was enormous, and there was beautiful building after beautiful building! Apparently the city took 14 years and a million workers to be built in 1406! It used to only be used by the Emperor and his concubines and was forbidden to everyone else (except the many, many, many servants).

Just like California 🙂

After our long walk through, it was time to warm up at lunch with some flower tea, fried tofu, glass noodles, pickled cucumbers and Malcolm’s favorite- noodle soup.

After lunch we were off to the Summer Palace. It/s a beautiful area of mostly man made lakes and hills.

This little peanut was exhausted from traveling but at least I was able to tuck him in to keep him warm.

At the end of the walk we got to take a dragon boat back to the start. Here is Adam’s best dragon face. This was definitely Adam’s favorite part of the day!