天安门广场，故宫--Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City (and some other stuff)

Here are some pictures from Saturday's trip to Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City. We rode our bikes to the subway station (about 10 min), and then took a train to the center of the city for all of ￥2 (~$.30). It takes about and hour to reach the center of the city, even though it's only about 8 miles. The subway system looks like it was designed by a first grader, so we have to transfer trains twice in the process. And if it's during rush hour, trains will come by packed to the walls and we have no choice but to wait or squeeze one person at a time on. Luckily the trains are frequent, air-conditioned, and usually reliable.

We got to Tienanmen Square on the south end and walked the length of it to get to the Forbidden City. We did the place by ourselves instead of opting for a tour guide, although we were constantly bothered by people offering to be our English-speaking tour guides. Some shots from inside the city:


Again, the Olympics are just.... everywhere. This sign on the side of Tienanmen Square is identical to many others we've seen since we got here.
Directly opposite that, there was a team of people cleaning the blocks that make up Tienanmen with a bunch of bottles of water and hand brushes. I don't have a good picture that illustrates just how unbelievably big a job this is, but the Square is roughly a half a mile long and a third of a mile wide. Sucks to be these guys.
One of my favorite shots of the inside of the Forbidden City. There are just vast expanses of open space in some areas and really dense collections of buildings in others...

Maybe the best shirt we've seen since we got here. The front was a picture of a teddy bear with a caption that said "Bees", and the back... was the text of an asbestos sign.
A pretty cool rock formation towards the back of the Forbidden City:
After that tour, we went to houhai and rented a boat. It was oppressively hot while we were touring the Forbidden City, so this was a good way to cool off.

The lake is probably a good mile long and half as wide, and entirely encircled by bars and restaurants.

Since Saturday, the temperatures have been a lot more mild, which is great. Yesterday (Tuesday), we didn't have afternoon class and it rained for hours on end, so it seemed this was a signal that it was time to do laundry. I made it ten days without even wearing some of what I brought, so I think I got it right. The only downside is that the washing machines here are not as good as the ones at home, and we have to hang dry. This might be the only aspect of this trip so far that I haven't enjoyed.
And even this wasn't so bad. I put some laundry in and then just relaxed. My friend Matt from across the hall is a big hockey fan, so we caught the end of the Penguins/Redwings game on the radio, but couldn't figure out how to get any video of it. Sounded pretty awesome though.

Anyway, that's all for now. All these pictures and more are at my Flickr page.