We woke up early on day 3 so we could go pick up some cash from an ATM and check out Wangjufing street in the daytime (that’s where we ate our street food on day 1) and go to the Arts & Crafts building. Basically, it is a huge department store dedicated to the arts & craft of China. There is embroidery, jewelry, silk, figurines, wood carving, porcelain, etc… We didn’t buy anything but had an amazing time looking at all of the stuff. No pictures.

After that we made the short walk back to Tienanmen Square. It was right next to our hotel. We had walked over a bit on day 1 just to get our bearings but didn’t cross into the square. On this morning, it was PACKED with people! From the side of the square you look across to the Forbidden City. We took a few pictures of us with that in the background although you can get an idea of how smoggy it is in Beijing from those shots.

The bottom picture is the National Museum of China. We didn’t go inside. There was a really long line.
Speaking of lines, there was one that ran the whole length of the square and even snaked back and forth for what we can only guess was at least 1 mile worth of line. We tried to capture the enormity of the line but there was really no way.

It goes as far as the eye can see and then on the other side of the square it curves around a couple of times and comes back. All of those people were waiting for their chance to go inside to Mao Mausoleum (which Carl dubbed the Maosoleum) to see Chairman Mao lying in state. We decided against waiting in that long line to do that so we waited until the afternoon to come back and take a picture in from of the “Maosoleum” without all the people in front.

After walking down one side of Tienanmen Square, we went looking for a Peking duck restaurant that was nearby. We didn’t find the one we were looking for but we found another one. It was delicious and you can see my China food report on Real Food Really Good some time next week.

After lunch we walked back through the square over to the Forbidden City.

This post is getting long enough so I’ll add the rest of the Forbidden City pictures to the next post.