Best Western	flags at hotel	our room	library viewed from room

On our first full day we first visited the Temple of Heaven park. In addition to containing the beautiful Temple of Heaven, the park is known for attracting retirees who come here to exercise and tourists who come to see the sights.

Temple of Heaven	Playing games and listening to musical performers

Exercising with streamers. Can you find Sandy?!

Streching	Ballroom dancing for exercise. This is our guide, Jessica.	Tai Chi

After the Temple of Heaven, we went to Tiananmen Square. This is the largest square in the world. It was once used for the Emporers to review the trips. While we were there, no mention was made of its more recent fame.

Mao's tomb had long lines	Tiananmen Square

Looking towards Forbidden City	Entrance to Forbidden City	Guard

The Forbidden City used to be the residence of Emperors. It is very big and contains an amazing number of beautiful buildings. You start with the outer buildings where business was conducted, proceed to a middle core where concubines lived, and finally arrive at the inner core where the Emperor lived.

One set of buildings in the city. There are many more.

The buildings are beautiful with lots of detail. Center picture shows figures on the roof - more animals more important the building. Last picture shows some amazing decorations.

More buildings		Sandy and Jessica

We toured a store where jade is sold. For thousands of years China has used jade to produce works of art. This was a government store, so the authenticity of the work was guaranteed.

Jade factory

Our most exciting part of the Beijing Tour was visting the Great Wall which is about an hour away from the city. On the way to the wall, our bus broke down. About a half hour later another bus finished our trip.

Breakdown going to Great Wall	Great Wall	Dick and Sandy

Great Wall	We hiked part of the less traveled wall - very steep!	Facing where the barbarians were. Small holes offer protection when shooting arrows

We stopped at another store to have yet another chance to buy Chinese works of art.

Cloissone Factory in Friendship Store	Outside the store

The following pictures were taken on a ricksaw tour of a hutong - a collection of hundreds of year old buildings that are being protected by the government.

our driver	rickshaw ride	coal for heating

hutong building we visited	touring the house	retirees exercising

retirees performing		music for the exercise

Also on the hutong tour, we visited a bell tower which has a 14 ton bell!

197 Bell Tower	198 The bell	199 View from bell tower - note the Hutong roofs	200 View from bell tower

After the rickshaw tour, we went to a tea ceremony.

fancy seat and table outside tea house	tea ceremony	exercise equipment seen along rickshaw ride

We were originally scheduled to visit a Ming Tomb after the Great Wall tour, but the delay due to bus breakdown caused this to be postponed to another day. Jessica, our tour guide, bent over backwards to make sure we had a great time in Beijing. The tomb we visited is just one of many in the valley. Others are not in as good shape because of damage during the Cultural Revolution.

205 Ming Tomb	Ming Tomb	people contribute money to homor ancestors - see inside of window	gargoyle

samples of what was in tomb

On our last day in Beijing we were on our own. We chose to visit what people call the Dirt Market (we don't know where the name comes from). It is a big bazaar which is visited by the locals on weekends