Day 3: Tour Beijing
This is our first full day in China. Despite being really tired and going to bed at 10 pm local time, we woke up in the middle of the night. We visited Tian'anmen Square, Forbidden City, and the Hutong neighborhood. We had lunch as a group in someone's house at Hutong and dinner as a group near our hotel. The weather was perfect today and the skies were blue. Tian'anmen Square was partially blocked off because a foreign leader was visiting today.
Forbidden City
Our tour guide stopped to talk near this little boy. He engaged with us and took pictures.
This is George, our tour guide.
This is the Imperial Garden section of Forbidden City.
After Forbidden City we went through the Hutong neighborhood on rickshaws.
We entered one family's courtyard and had lunch at their house in this room.
Dinner as a group near our hotel. All of the families on the following two photos (plus some not at dinner) are adopting. Most will stay together as a single group and go to ZhengZhou. That is where we adopted Sawyer from. We will split off and go to Guangzhou since our daughter is near there. For the last part of the trip we'll all meet up again since everyone needs to spend their last week in Guangzhou to go to their consulate appointment.
Preparing Peking Duck for us.
After dinner we walked near our hotel. This is a big courtyard in front of a church where people were line dancing.
A nearby city block (just down the street from an Apple Store) had outdoor food kiosks with snake, cat, dog, scorpions, cockroaches, squid, centipedes, testicles, and full deep fried bird (with head). Almost everything was on a stick. It was kind of a county fair atmosphere with strange food.
