8 AM. Daan the cursed roommate jumps out of bed. A meeting or something… Not today for me. I snooze and quickly find my way back to sleep. 9 AM. Snooze. 10 AM. Snooze. I mean, I don’t want to excuse my pathetic morning behaviour but aside of the exhausting day before, me and a few others had found a nice bar the night before and had done the whole thing on 3 hours of sleep…
11 AM. We got up. The trip to the forbidden city (attempt 2) would start at noon and me and Riccardo ran to get breakfast in time. Soon after, we took the tube and tunneled through customs to reach the red walls adorned with the giant portrait of chancellor Zedong himself. Inside, the scorching heat, crowded mass and stone floors with no shadow made visiting the palace a tough task. Some even decided to run straight for the exit. We quickly retreated to the edges of the palace, where we found shadow and mostly empty terraces. There the visit got interesting. The forbidden palace has a large history, being built between 1000 and 1400 and renovated many more times. The last emperor Pu Yi was locked up there when the revolution began. We also learned the mighty Qianlong emperor loved his mother empress dowager Chongqing very much. He wrote her poems and gave her a palace in the forbidden city, which we found and observed today.
Afterwards the group headed to the centre, where we had reserved a spot in a famous Peking duck restaurant. I personally opted for the vegetarian option, but found it quite lacklustre as there was no tofu. The others however enjoyed the duck plentifully! In China, when you are done eating, you leave the restaurant. We Dutchmen however like to take our time, both to process the food and to tell tall stories. After a few dirty looks of the servers we could tell our time had passed and the queue of customers needed to move forward, so we left.
Remember the bar I talked about? They serve shisha, have great live music and serve cheap alcohol so naturally we went again. Technically this marvelous evening is no longer mine to update about but let me spoil that we at least made it home. Praise the taxi.
