We arrived recently in Beijing and we had one day before departing to North Korea. I felt incapacitated without wheels so I decided to try to rent some bikes from the Beijing bike sharing project. Since we were non residents the situation was a bit more complicated. Furthermore, after some 2 hours of trying we had to give up when we understood that in between the bike rental place and the metro station across the street (the place where we purchased the required metro cards) there was a district boundary and the cards weren’t going to work at that particular rental center. OK… we took the train and after sweating for some 30 minutes we arrived at the Forbidden City. In our opinion the fame is well ahead of the actual value of this objective. Perhaps, after seeing so many exciting sites, the average ones can’t impress us anymore. Anyways, the compound consists of a few similar looking buildings that housed the Chinese emperor from around 1420 until 1925, during the Ming and Qing dynasties.

After that we took a rickshaw ride in narrow alleys in Hutong. In the gate picture, the 4 things above the gate show the social rank of the owner while the 2 rock sculptures on the sides show his employment.

Last thing we went on a nearby hill to have a better view of the palace.