The Forbidden City
We visited the Forbidden City (Gu Gong in Chinese, the imperial palace during the Ming and Qing dynasties) on the third day. If you say the palace is huge, it's really an understatement! No kidding!

We spent the entire day exploring the palace and still not able to cover the whole palace. I wonder if the Emperor had ever been to every part of his residence. Our legs were aching so badly by late afternoon that we couldn't go on anymore. We finally had to throw in the towels, and rested under a tree for a break. By the end of the day, what we could only think of was a good foot massage.



The Great Wall of China
One the fourth day, we woke up at 4a.m to make our way out of Beijing city to the Great Wall of China. It was indeed an incredible feat to build the wall on treacherous slopes which I don't even think it was humanly possible without the use of advanced machinery at that time. Nonetheless, the people of China did it. To conserve our energy for the rest of the day, we didn't climb the entire Great Wall of China, we took a cable car up and started mid way instead. Even then, the hike up was exhausting!